Day of the Spiders

by Brian O'Gorman

  “We need everything down here, there are spiders everywhere, and I think they are venomous. Send everything you have,” yelled Booth into her radio.

  By the time they had got to the bottom of the street, Boris’ house was covered from floor to ceiling, from roof to pavement in spiders.

  21.

  Probably the best thing about Ken Rogers’ job as the maintenance man of Suicide Towers was his little hide-away, or as he liked to call it, his office. It was actually a small room situated around the back of the base of the tower that was supposed to be a store room for all his tools and equipment. When he had started the job just after the tower had been finished, and the residents began to move in one by one, he had found himself in and out of the equipment room, grabbing the right things to fix a leaking tap, or a door that wouldn’t quite close properly and all of those other little quirks that you always tended to get on a new building. During the colder months of the year he used to stall going to the next job simply because the boiler in the room gave it an ambience that was good enough to fall asleep in. He had mulled an idea over one evening after he had sunk a few beers in front of the football and he had returned the next day carrying an old office chair that he kept in his kitchen. He normally sat on the chair when he was supposed to be doing the washing up, or some other task that his wife Sandra had sent him in there to do. He had reasoned to himself that the chair could be put to much better use in the equipment room of the towers so that he could have himself a nice sit down and perhaps enjoy some tea from his long silver flask which looked to him like some sort of space-age sex toy. Perhaps he could even lean back in the chair, have himself a smoke and then catch a little nap whilst he was in between jobs, the rumble and warmth of the boiler acting like an industrial lullaby to send him on his way. It had turned out to be one of the finest ideas that he had ever had in his whole miserable life. That chair had changed his working day from an endless grind to a little hard graft and a whole lot of lounging. It had altered the entire balance of his day-to-day life by making it far more appealing to be at work than it was at home. Just to be able to spend so much time without getting a flea in his ear from Sandra every two minutes was an absolute blessing. He also knew that if they had a falling out then he could come right back to his little haven and stay there until the storm had blown over. It was the perfect companion on every level. He began to stash other things in the little room, a bag of snack foods and cans of cola so he didn’t have to waste valuable lounging time going to the shop. All-in-all, he had himself a nice little set up in his ‘office.’

  It had been a quiet day for Ken so far, and by quiet, it meant that nothing had happened that he needed to fix or take care of. His day before he had set off for work had been anything but quiet. Sandra had been in fine voice since the moment he had opened his eyes. She usually started kicking off if he snoozed his alarm and decided on another ten minutes sleep. She was such an unbelievable stickler for keeping things happening right on time. Ken had worked out a long time ago, that if things didn’t go exactly as Sandra had planned then the whole entire day was fucked, at least in her mind. His blasé attitude to just about everything really got on her goat. This morning he had double-snoozed which had sent her into overdrive. She had stormed into the room, still wet from the shower and torn the duvet off the bed, roaring at the top of her voice to inform him what a lazy shit he was (as if he didn’t already know.)

  He had rolled off the naked bed, got himself dressed and walked straight out of the house without even bothering to brush his teeth. Sandra had continued her verbal assault on him even after he had closed the front door behind him. He started walking, still with his teeth gritted and his fists opening and clenching until he had reached the end of his street. By the time he was halfway to the tower, which poked up from the landscape like a green-striped phallus, he was beginning to feel a whole lot better. He began to enjoy the Indian summer which gave the normally cold air a soothing warm glow. He felt the generally shitty start to the day beginning to ebb away. Soon he would be in the comfort of his office and the rest of the day could just about go to hell as far as he was concerned. He even called in at the coffee house which was on the corner of Lancaster Road, about half a mile from the tower, and got himself a nice big cup of black tea. By the time he got to the office it would be just about hitting the right temperature for drinking. He was going to set everything straight, and perhaps even contemplate what he was going to do about the thorn in his arse that was called Sandra.

  He had drunk the tea and took an hour or so to go through the newspaper just to kick things off, then he had spent half-an-hour in quiet contemplation of how he could get away from Sandra, or perhaps alter things so that she wasn’t such an incorrigible pain in the arse. He thought of drugging her somehow, perhaps with a healthy dose of cocaine or something else to give her a kick. Maybe he could give her so much that she would drop dead, giving him the freedom of his own home to behave however he pleased. He stretched out in his chair and stacked his feet on the pile of old newspapers that he had collected and made into a footrest. Waves of tiredness were washing over him. He needed to recharge the old batteries before he could do anything else.

  He managed to sleep well into the afternoon before the buzzing and twinkling of his mobile phone snapped him out of his slumber. He scrambled the phone out of his trouser pocket, his cloudy mind unable to tell him exactly where he was, or what he was doing. He got the phone in his hand. He hit the answer button and held it to his ear. A post-sleep headache was pulsing and snarling around his temples.

  “Kenny, got an urgent for you.”

  It was Tillart, that scrawny office-boy puke from the association office. Ken really had nothing against him, it just stuck in his throat that someone so much younger than him could order him around like his own personal pet. He fumbled his notepad and pen off his counter at the side of his chair.

  “Go ahead,” he mumbled.

  “Got a water leak. It’s coming in through the ceiling of apartment 332. The leak could be coming from the flat above, ok?”

  Ken scribbled it down in his barely legible handwriting. He got the basics – leak 332 flat above.

  He hung up the phone without making niceties with Tillart and got his head together. He had to get the main water supply shut off first. It was quicker and easier. He scooped up his tool box and pushed his way out of the office.

  He let himself into the main building and headed left to the utility room. He opened the door with his key and yanked it open. The door gave off a rusty squeal as it came open. Ken made a mental note to bring the oil along next time to give the hinges a good going over. He went inside and found the mains water valve. He grabbed the handle and pushed it anticlockwise. He heard the rush of water going through the pipes getting choked off. The mains electricity box was the only noise left in the room. The insectile buzz sounded very loud inside the small room without the hiss of the water running through the pipes.

  Ken went out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him. He got in the lift and headed up to the twelfth floor where the complaint had come from. He went to 332 and found a scrawny old man standing outside the door his thin, pale arms folded across his chest in a gesture of utter annoyance. He saw Ken coming and began to shout, his arms flapping wildly in the air.

  “Stupid nigger bitch. In and out all hours of the night, now this. As soon as she fucks off back to her own country, the better.”

  Ken strode passed him. He felt a strong urge to give the old bastard an elbow to the ribs to see if that would change his views on Mr. Working Class Whitey. He chose to ignore him and went into the flat to see what was going on. He could hear the water dripping in the hallway and the kitchen of the flat. It wasn’t a small amount of water either. The floor was soaking and the walls were painted with clean streaks through the nicotine stains. The ceiling was bulging, carrying the weight of leaking water within it. By turning the mains off he was pretty sure that the problem, at least for n
ow, wasn’t going to get any worse. He made his way out of the flat again, ignoring the ranting of the old bastard that lived there and he made his way to the stairs. He went up a flight and came through the fire door. He made his way to the end of the corridor and to the flat, number 432, that he reckoned was the source of the problem. He rapped on the door, purely out of habit. He had a pretty good idea that if the occupant was home that they would have reported the leak themselves. He went straight to his toolbox and took out his large roll of master keys. He flicked through them until he found the matching key and he unlocked the door.

  “I’m coming in,” he bellowed, again simply out of compliance with the normal protocol. He pushed the door open and wasn’t surprised to find that the flat was empty. He could hear water splashing onto the floor somewhere off to the left. The living room he was standing in was almost anally tidy. Every piece of furniture looked like it had cost a pretty penny. Whoever it was that lived here, she had kitted herself out pretty well. He momentarily imagined asking her out for a drink, to try and compensate her for the water damage that had happened. Perhaps he could get her drunk enough to bring him back here on a more sociable basis. If he didn’t get anywhere with her, he could fuck her couch, such was the quality of it.

  He walked around the living room for a moment, admiring all of the expensive looking knick-knacks that she had collected. She had a hell of a nice television too. It wasn’t overly large, but it was one of those new fancy ones with a curved screen that he personally had his eye on for a while now. He squatted down to look at the curvature on the screen, wondering just how much the picture quality on it would be so much better than the tiny, cheap little thing he had at home. As he was looking at the screen he heard a noise behind him. At the same time, he saw movement on the screen, as if someone had come in the room behind him. He initially suspected that the old bastard from downstairs had followed him up so he could come and put the boot in a little more. He stood up and turned around, ready to give the old fucker a piece of his mind.

  What he saw killed the words dead in his mouth. He felt his bladder give way in a rush of warmth that cascaded down his legs.

  There was a spider coming through from the hallway that led to the bathroom. It was a spider that was as big as a horse. It came through the hallway and stood at the other end of the living room. Ken only looked at it for a moment, but in that moment, he saw everything. The huge thick legs that had tufts of spikey hair covering them, the pulsating abdomen…and then there was the human face, the naked and hairy female human body. He saw the tattoo that it had just above its right breast, and the few remaining teeth that were still left in its mouth. Ken stumbled backwards against the window, pressing his back against it. He began to move sideways, hoping that he could get to the short hallway that led to the front door so he could bolt out of there. His breath was coming in shallow hitches, his chest hurting from the effort of pulling in so many short breaths in such a short space of time. The spider-thing suddenly charged at him, battering furniture out of the way as it advanced. He wanted to run for it, but his legs and feet were frozen to the floor, the paralysing fear tearing through his body. The spider bore down on him, its fangs sprouting from the upper gums where the teeth were missing. He brought up his arms, trying to defend himself from the onslaught, but it was to no avail. He felt the front legs encircling his body. He felt them tighten, his ribs resisting at first and then splintering with an ear-splitting crackle. His last breath was forced from his deflating lungs, sending out a strangled bray and a jet of bright red blood spraying from his mouth. The fangs came down and punctured his carotid artery. He was lifted from the floor, his urine soaked legs twitching and shaking as the last of his life force left his body. The spider suckled the blood from Ken’s body, drinking it down as if it was a quick shot of whiskey being knocked back by a Friday night drunk. Ken’s skin began to wrinkle and shrivel, taking on an appearance that made it look like damp cardboard. The spider finished its meal and dropped Ken’s ramshackled body to the floor where it folded up in a battered heap.

  The spider slowly made its way back to the dark hallway where it had been hiding. It sat in the dark, waiting for its next victim to arrive. It had to rest, it had to preserve the meal it had just taken. It watched the hallway with the eyes that had once belonged to Doctor Ochre. Somewhere in its mind it could still remember her, still remember fragments of the life that she had led. But all of it was clouded with a new incentive, a new mission parameter.

  Wait.

  Wait for them.

  22.

  Thompson had returned to the hospital a full hour after Wells had been taken in. His gut instinct had been just to go home, pack up a supply of clothing for him and Cindy and head for the coast. He had never been one to want everything to just blow over without him involved, but seeing Wells in such a bad way had allowed that feeling to break through that hardened wall that he had built around his emotional state during all of his years of doing the job. It had been through a sheer force of willpower that he had headed for the hospital. He probably should have stayed behind to help get the station up and running again, but to hell with all of that. Roberts could take charge of that little clean up. He needed to earn his fucking pay doing something other than shouting, bawling and overacting his way to home time.

  He went into the hospital and asked the receptionist where he could find Wells. She punched a few buttons on her computer keyboard and then asked him to take a seat for moment. Thompson found an empty chair next to the left-hand wall. The chair next to him was occupied by, what looked to Thompson, like a homeless man. His clothing was faded and threadbare around the edges. A thatch of thick and matted hair jutted out from under a black beanie hat. His considerable beard had the same consistency of his hair. The moment Thompson sat down the man looked him up and down.

  “’ere, you got a quid for a starving genius?” said the man.

  Thompson looked at him curiously. The tramp smiled, showing the few remaining tombstones of his teeth.

  “Genius eh?,” said Thompson.

  The tramp saluted him. “Aye laddie, smartest brain in the entire northern hemisphere,” he said tapping his head with a finger.

  “Tell me then, how come you don’t have any money if you’re such a genius?” said Thompson.

  The bellowed fresh laughter into Thompson’s tired face. “That’s a fine question my friend. Let me put it to you this way; Could you compare the quality of life that you have with the quality of mine?”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Thompson.

  “This morning, I was over in the fine city of Hemmington, trying to get together enough brass for a morning cup of tea. I had made it up to three pounds and twenty-two pence, and I decided to delay my morning refreshment to see if I could gather enough funds for a chocolate croissant to go with my morning tea. Do y’know what happened then?”

  Thompson shook his head. He was honestly fascinated by this strange man.

  “Well, a young fella in a nice suit comes up to me, hands me a tray with a great big frothy coffee and a full English in a little plastic tray. I goes to shake his hand to thank him and he has a twenty pound note curled up in his hand. Yessir, he wished me God’s speed and he went on his way.”

  “That was lucky,” said Thompson.

  The tramp wheezed again, “Nothin’ to do with luck Chief. The natural instinct of every human being, if you strip away all the bullshit that they surround themselves with, is to help their fellow man. I have lived this life of mine for over thirty years, bin to pretty much every town and city in the country. I used some of that twenty pounds to jump on a bus to this fine town. Might stay a while too.”

  “How does it all make you a genius?” said Thompson. He had a smile on his face, he couldn’t help it.

  “I don’t have no mortgage to worry about, no housework to do, no taxes to pay. I don’t have to worry about needing somewhere to sleep at night. God’s green grass is my mattress and the sky is my bla
nket. Wish it was heated during the winter mind.” He roared again and slapped his own leg.

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” said Thompson.

  “It’s the only way of looking at it chief. We only get so long on this earth my friend, you have to make the most of it, whatever your lot in life is. Mine ain’t as prosperous as most, but I’m doing everything I can to make the best of it, after all, it’s the only life I got.”

  There was silence between them for a moment. Thompson decided that this guy was absolutely right, he was a genius. He had made everything bad that was going on in his life right now seem like a minor inconvenience. He really had no idea of how lucky he was. He dug into his pocket, fished out his wallet and took all the notes out of it. He wasn’t sure how much there was in there, he guessed it was around fifty pounds or so. He held it out to the tramp.

  “Here, go have yourself more adventures. Take a look at Layton Valley if you get a chance. Beautiful spot,” said Thompson.

  The tramp took hold of the money, his smile growing visibly under his beard. “God bless you my friend. Whenever you feel life is getting a little hard, just remember, do the best you can with what you got, you feel me?”

  “Yeah, I feel you,” said Thompson he offered his hand, “Pleased to meet you Mr?”