by Neil Gaiman
Daisy said, “I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about, Grahame.”
The singer was finishing “Some of These Days”: her voice was bluesy and rich, and it twined around them all like a velvet scarf.
Some of these days
You’re going to miss me honey
Some of these days
You’re gonna be so lonely
You’ll miss my huggin‘
You’ll miss my kissin‘…
“You’re going to pay the bill,” said Grahame. “Then I’ll escort you and the young lady out to the car. And we’ll go back to my place, for a proper talk. Any funny business, and I shoot you both. Capiche?”
Fat Charlie capiched. He also capiched who had been driving the black Mercedes that afternoon and just how close he had already come to death that day. He was beginning to capiche how utterly cracked Grahame Coats was and how little chance Daisy and he had of getting out of this alive.
The singer finished her song. The other people scattered around the restaurant clapped. Fat Charlie kept his hands palms-down on the table. He stared past Graham Coats at the singer, and, with the eye that Grahame Coats could not see, he winked at her. She was tired of people avoiding her eyes; Fat Charlie’s wink was extremely welcome.
Daisy said, “Grahame, obviously I came here because of you, but Charlie’s just—” She stopped and made the kind of expression you make when someone pushes a gun barrel deeper into your stomach.
Grahame Coats said, “Listen to me. For the purposes of the innocent bystanders here assembled, we’re all good friends. I’m going to put the gun into my pocket, but it will still be pointing at you. We’re going to get up. We’re going to my car. And I will—”
He stopped. A woman with a red spangly dress and a microphone was heading for their table with an enormous smile on her face. She was making for Fat Charlie. She said into her microphone, “What’s your name, darlin‘?” She put the microphone into Fat Charlie’s face.
“Charlie Nancy,” said Fat Charlie. His voice caught and wavered.
“And where you from, Charlie?”
“England. Me and my friends. We’re all from England.”
“And what do you do, Charlie?”
Everything slowed. It was like diving off a cliff into the ocean. It was the only way out. He took a deep breath and said it. “I’m between jobs,” he started. “But I’m really a singer. I sing. Just like you.”
“Like me? What kind of things you sing?”
Fat Charlie swallowed. “What have you got?”
She turned to the other people at Fat Charlie’s table. “Do you think we could get him to sing for us?” she asked, gesturing with her microphone.
“Er. Don’t think so. No. Absatively out of the question,” said Grahame Coats. Daisy shrugged, her hands flat on the table.
The woman in the red dress turned to the rest of the room. “What do we think?” she asked them.
There was a rustle of clapping from the diners at the other tables, and more enthusiastic applause from the serving staff. The barman called out, “Sing us something!”
The singer leaned in to Fat Charlie, covered the mike, and said, “Better make it something the boys know.”
Fat Charlie said, “Do they know ‘Under the Boardwalk’?” and she nodded, announced it, and gave him the microphone.
The band began to play. The singer led Fat Charlie up to the little stage, his heart beating wildly in his chest.
Fat Charlie began to sing, and the audience began to listen.
All he had wanted was to buy himself some time, but he felt comfortable. No one was throwing things. He seemed to have plenty of room in his head to think in. He was aware of everyone in the room: the tourists and the serving staff, and the people over at the bar. He could see everything: he could see the barman measuring out a cocktail, and the old woman in the rear of the room filling a large plastic mug with coffee. He was still terrified, still angry, but he took all the terror and the anger, and he put it into the song, and let it all become a song about lazing and loving. As he sang, he thought.
What would Spider do? thought Fat Charlie. What would my dad do?
He sang. In his song, he told them all exactly what he planned to do under the boardwalk, and it mostly involved making love.
The singer in the red dress was smiling and snapping her fingers and shimmying her body to the music. She leaned into the keyboard player’s microphone and began to harmonize.
I’m actually singing in front of an audience, thought Fat Charlie. Bugger me.
He kept his eyes on Grahame Coats.
As he entered the last chorus, he began to clap his hands above his head, and soon the whole room was clapping along with him, diners and waiters and chefs, everyone except Grahame Coats, whose hands were beneath the tablecloth, and Daisy, whose hands were flat on the table. Daisy was looking at him as if he was not simply barking mad, but had picked an extremely odd moment to discover his inner Drifters.
The audience clapped, and Fat Charlie smiled and he sang, and as he sang he knew, without any shadow of a doubt, that everything was going to be all right. They were going to be just fine, him and Spider and Daisy and Rosie, too, wherever she was, they’d be okay. He knew what he was going to do: it was foolish and unlikely and the act of an idiot, but it would work. And as the last notes of the song faded away, he said, “There’s a young lady at the table I was sitting at. Her name’s Daisy Day. She’s from England too. Daisy, can you wave at everyone?”
Daisy gave him a sick look, but she raised a hand from the table, and she waved.
“There’s something I wanted to say to Daisy. She doesn’t know I’m going to say this.” If this doesn’t work, whispered a voice at the back of his head, she’s dead. You know that? “But let’s hope she says yes. Daisy? Will you marry me?”
The room was quiet. Fat Charlie stared at Daisy, willing her to understand, to play along.
Daisy nodded.
The diners applauded. This was a floor show. The singer, the maître d‘, and several of the waitresses descended on the table, hauled Daisy to her feet, and pulled her over to the middle of the floor. They pulled her over to Fat Charlie, and, as the band played “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” he put his arm around her.
“You got a ring for her?” asked the singer.
He put his hand into his pocket. “Here,” he said to Daisy. “This is for you.” He put his arms around her and kissed her. If anyone is going to get shot, he thought, it will be now. Then the kiss was over, and people were shaking his hand and hugging him—one man, in town, he said, for the music festival, insisted on giving Fat Charlie his card—and now Daisy was holding the lime he had given her with a very strange expression on her face; and when he looked back to the table they had been sitting at, Grahame Coats was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHICH PROVES TO BE UNLUCKY FOR SOME
THE BIRDS WERE EXCITED, NOW. THEY WERE CAWING AND CRYING and chattering in the treetops. It’s coming, thought Spider, and he cursed. He was spent and done. There was nothing left in him. Nothing but fatigue, nothing but exhaustion.
He thought about lying on the ground and being devoured. Overall, he decided, it was a lousy way to go. He wasn’t even certain that he’d be able to regrow a liver, while he was pretty sure that whatever was stalking him had no plans to stop at just the liver anyway.
He began to wrench at the stake. He counted to three, and then, as best as he could and as much as he could, jerked both of his arms toward him so they’d tense the rope and pull the stake, then he counted to three and did it again.
It had about as much effect as if he was to try to pull a mountain across a road. One two three…tug. And again. And again.
He wondered if the beast would come soon.
One two three…tug. One two three…tug.
Somewhere, someone was singing, he could hear it. And the song made Spider smile. He found himself wishing that he still had a ton
gue: he’d stick it out at the tiger when it finally made its appearance. The thought gave him strength.
On two three…tug.
And the stake gave and shifted in his hands.
One more pull and the stake came out of the ground, slick as a sword sliding out of a stone.
He pulled the ropes toward him, and held the stake in his hands. It was about three feet long. One end had been sharpened to go into the ground. He pushed it out of the loops of rope with numb hands. Ropes dangled uselessly from his wrists. He hefted the stake in his right hand. It would do. And he knew then that he was being watched: that it had been watching him for some time now, like a cat watching a mousehole.
It came to him in silence, or nearly, insinuating its way toward him like a shadow moving across the day. The only movement that caught the eye was its tail, which swished impatiently. Otherwise, it might have been a statue, or a mound of sand that looked, due to a trick of the light, like a monstrous beast, for its coat was a sandy color, its unblinking eyes the green of the midwinter sea. Its face was the wide, cruel face of a panther. In the islands they called any big cat Tiger, and this was every big cat there had ever been—bigger, meaner, more dangerous.
Spider’s ankles were still hobbled, and he could barely walk. Pins and needles pricked his hands and his feet. He hopped from one foot to another and tried to look as if he was doing it on purpose, some kind of dance of intimidation, and not because standing hurt him.
He wanted to crouch and untie his ankles, but he did not dare take his eyes off the beast.
The stake was heavy and thick but was too short to be a spear, too clumsy and large to be anything else. Spider held it by the narrower end, where it had been sharpened, and he looked away, out to sea, intentionally not looking at the place the animal was, relying on his peripheral vision for information.
What had she said? You will bleat. You will whimper. Your fear will excite him.
Spider began to whimper. Then he bleated, like an injured goat, lost and plump and alone.
A flash of sandy-colored motion, barely enough time to register teeth and claws as they blurred toward him. Spider swung the stake like a baseball bat as hard as he could, feeling it connect with a satisfying thunk across the beast’s nose.
Tiger stopped, stared at him as if unable to believe its eyes, then made a noise in the back of its throat, a querulous growl, and it walked, stiff-legged, back in the direction it had come, toward the scrub, as if it had a prior appointment that it wished it could get out of. It glared back at Spider resentfully over its shoulder, a beast in pain, and gave him the look of an animal who would be returning.
Spider watched it go.
Then he sat down, and untangled and untied his ankles.
He walked, a little unsteadily, along the cliff edge, following it gently downhill. Soon a stream crossed his path, running off the cliff edge in a sparkling waterfall. Spider went down on his knees, cupped his hands together, and began to drink the cool water.
Then he began to collect rocks. Good, fist-sized rocks. He stacked them together, like snowballs.
“YOU’VE HARDLY EATEN ANYTHING,” SAID ROSIE.
“You eat. Keep your strength up,” said her mother. “I had a little of that cheese. It was enough.”
It was cold in the meat cellar, and it was dark. Not the kind of dark your eyes get used to, either. There was no light. Rosie had walked the perimeter of the cellar, her fingers trailing against the whitewash and rock and crumbling brick, looking for something that would help, finding nothing.
“You used to eat,” said Rosie. “Back when Dad was alive.”
“Your father,” said her mother, “used to eat, too. And see where it got him? A heart attack, aged forty-one. What kind of world is that?”
“But he loved his food.”
“He loved everything,” said her mother bitterly. “He loved food, he loved people, he loved his daughter. He loved cooking. He loved me. What did it get him? Just an early grave. You mustn’t go loving things like that. I’ve told you.”
“Yes,” said Rosie. “I suppose you have.”
She walked toward the sound of her mother’s voice, hand in front of her face to stop it banging into one of the metal chains that hung in the middle of the room. She found her mother’s bony shoulder, put an arm around her.
“I’m not scared,” said Rosie, in the darkness.
“You’re crazy, then,” said her mother.
Rosie let go of her mother, moved back into the middle of the room. There was a sudden creaking noise. Dust and powdered plaster fell from the ceiling.
“Rosie? What are you doing?” asked Rosie’s mother.
“Swinging on the chain.”
“You be careful. If that chain gives way, you’ll be on the floor with a broken head before you can say Jack Robinson.” There was no answer from her daughter. Mrs. Noah said, “I told you. You’re crazy.”
“No,” said Rosie. “I’m not. I’m just not scared anymore.”
Above them, in the house, the front door slammed.
“Bluebeard’s home,” said Rosie’s mother.
“I know. I heard,” said Rosie. “I’m still not scared.”
PEOPLE KEPT CLAPPING FAT CHARLIE ON THE BACK, AND buying him drinks with umbrellas in them; in addition to which, he had now collected five business cards from people in the music world on the island for the festival.
All around the room, people were smiling at him. He had an arm around Daisy: he could feel her trembling. She put her lips to his ear. “You’re a complete loony, you know that?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
She looked at him. “You’re full of surprises.”
“Come on,” he said. “We’re not done yet.”
He made for the maître d‘. “Excuse me… There was a lady. While I was singing. She came in, refilled her coffee mug from the pot back there, by the bar. Where did she go?”
The maître d‘ blinked and shrugged. She said, “I don’t know…”
“Yes, you do,” said Fat Charlie. He felt certain, and smart. Soon enough, he knew, he would feel like himself again, but he had sung a song to an audience, and he had enjoyed it. He had done it to save Daisy’s life, and his own, and he had done both these things. “Let’s talk out there.” It was the song. While he had been singing, everything had become perfectly clear. It was still clear. He headed for the hallway, and Daisy and the maître d‘ followed.
“What’s your name?” he asked the maître d‘.
“I’m Clarissa.”
“Hello, Clarissa. What’s your last name?”
Daisy said, “Charlie, shouldn’t we call the police?”
“In a minute. Clarissa what?”
“Higgler.”
“And what’s your relationship to Benjamin? The concierge?”
“He’s my brother.”
“And how exactly are you two related to Mrs. Higgler. To Callyanne Higgler?”
“They’re my niece and nephew, Fat Charlie,” said Mrs. Higgler, from the doorway. “Now, I think you better listen to your fiancée, and talk to the police. Don’t you?”
SPIDER WAS SITTING BY THE STREAM ON THE CLIFF TOP, WITH his back to the cliff and a heap of throwing stones in front of him, when a man came loping out of the long grass. The man was naked, save for a pelt of sandy fur around his waist, behind which a tail hung down; he wore a necklace of teeth, sharp and white and pointed. His hair was long and black. He walked casually toward Spider as if he were merely out for an early-morning constitutional, and Spider’s appearance there was a pleasant surprise.
Spider picked up a rock the size of a grapefruit, hefted it in his hand.
“Heya, Anansi’s child,” said the stranger. “I was just passing, and I noticed you, and wondered if there was anything I could do to help.” His nose looked crooked and bruised.
Spider shook his head. He missed his tongue.
“Seeing you there, I find myself thinking, poor Anansi’s child
, he must be so hungry.” The stranger smiled too widely. “Here. I’ve got food enough to share with you.” He had a sack over his shoulder, and now he opened the sack and reached his right hand into it, producing a freshly killed black-tailed lamb. He held it by the neck. Its head lolled. “Your father and I ate together on many an occasion. Is there any reason that you and I cannot do likewise? You can make the fire and I will clean the lamb and make a spit to turn it. Can you not taste it already?”
Spider was so hungry he was light-headed. Had he still been in possession of his tongue, perhaps he would have said yes, confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble; but he had no tongue. He picked up a second rock in his left hand.
“So let us feast and be friends; and let there be no more misunderstandings,” said the stranger.
And the vulture and the raven will clean my bones, thought Spider.
The stranger took another step toward Spider, who decided that this was his cue to throw the first rock. He had a good eye and an excellent arm, and the rock struck where he had intended it to strike, on the stranger’s right arm; he dropped the lamb. The next rock hit the stranger on the side of the head—Spider had been aiming for a spot just between the too-widely-set eyes, but the man had moved.
The stranger ran then, a bounding run, with his tail straight out behind him. Sometimes he looked like a man when he ran, and sometimes he looked like a beast.
When he was gone, Spider walked to the place he had been, to retrieve the black-tailed lamb. It was moving, when he reached it, and for a heartbeat he imagined that it was still alive, but then he saw that the flesh was creeping with maggots. It stank, and the stench of the corpse helped Spider forget how hungry he was, for a little while.
He carried it at arm’s length to the cliff edge and threw it down into the sea. Then he washed his hands in the stream.
He did not know how long he had been in this place. Time was stretched and squashed here. The sun was lowering on the horizon.
After the sun has set, and before the moon has risen, thought Spider. That is when the beast will be back.