The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1)

by Bartholomew Lander

  “Another time,” he said again, tone stern.

  The last stitch in the back of the tank top came together, completing the edges of the cut slits. They’d be nice and snug at least until her next molt, whenever that ended up being. Hope my legs don’t grow too much. It would suck to redo my whole wardrobe. She held the shirt up, gave it another once over, and removed the pins. With her work done, she laid the tank top beside her on the couch and sank back into the pleather. Two of her appendages gestured toward the book that sat in Mark’s lap. “What are you reading?”

  “It’s an old volume on obscure folklore tradition.” He picked the dark book up and turned it over. “Catch.”

  At once, the book was hurtling toward her. Her mouth fell open in panic, but her legs’ reflexes were sharp enough that they caught the tome in mid-air before it hit her. Once she realized what had happened, she glared at Mark. “The hell are you doing?”

  A warm smile appeared on his face. “Forgive me. I wanted to see if you would use your hands or your legs to catch it.”

  “That’s kind of a fucked up experiment to pull on someone. You could’ve asked.” She huffed and crossed her arms. “You just come into my parlor, fill my head with cult nonsense, and then you throw books at me. Thanks a lot.” It shouldn’t have upset her so much, but his sudden show of humor had taken her off guard.

  Pouting, she held the book before her with two pairs of legs and opened it to an arbitrary page. The first thing she noticed was how old it was. The pages were stained brown, wrinkled, and dreadfully misaligned in the spine. The faint smell of mildew emanated from the cracks between the sheets of ancient paper. Rows upon rows of tightly packed, curly script pressed against the margins like magma under pressure. “What language is this?”

  “Vulgar Latin,” he said. “Some of the most important books in the Vigil’s library were written in it, so I was expected to learn, of course.”

  Using her free spider legs, she began to flip through the pages of loopy script. The tips of her legs brushed the surface of the paper, and it felt too much like worn-out sandpaper for her tastes. Cryptic diagrams and images punctuated the contents of the book, and the letters were so stylized and dense as to be indistinguishable. And I thought my signature was bad. “You can seriously read this?”

  “Most of it. Some of it is unintelligible, however.”

  She continued turning the pages using her leg-tips, looking at each new image with a sense of foreboding. Whether she disregarded Mark’s alleged gift of magic or not, there was something undeniably occult about this volume. Some of the diagrams looked like a Satanic inversion of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, and the whole thing could have been an unsavory mockery of the Voynich Manuscript. It even called to mind some of the crazed urban legends surrounding the abandoned prison known as San Solano, said by some to be a sacred site for psychomancers and their daemonic thralls. And on another level, it reminded her of that odd sigil she often saw within her own dreams.

  A page then appeared that lacked any text at all, and featured only a single image depicting a great bird-like creature. The wide, shadowy wings dwarfed the rest of the creature, dominating the spread. The bird’s head, which rested at the end of a long, buzzard-like neck, had no eyes. Its beak, which split into two prongs, was agape. Within its maw squirmed what may have been a violent mass of maggots. Further down, an inordinate number of legs grew from the center of the thing’s body. Each leg ended in grasping talons that, like the beak, opened into maws full of writhing tongues.

  Shivering, she eased the tome closed. “Is this book magic?” she asked, only half-joking.

  “No, it is merely old. I can see why you may draw that conclusion, however.”

  She rose to her feet, spine still tingling from the hideous bird thing, and walked over to where Mark sat. She passed him the book without a word. Throwing it back at him wouldn’t have been received well, she was sure.

  He nodded at her with a smile. “I thank you.”

  The will to smile back seeped away. She turned from him and scooped her tank top up into her spider legs. “Well, think I’m going to try to sleep. Thanks for entertaining me again.”

  “No problem. You are welcome anytime. It is your parlor, after all.”

  Spinneretta nodded, this time finding the strength to smile despite the portent of the book and what it meant for his claims of culthood and magic. “Alright. Maybe I’ll take you up on that.” With that, she let herself out of the study and returned to her room.

  It took a while, but she eventually managed to fall asleep. The chaotic and turbulent images swirling in her head invited haunting dreams of sigils and smoke and shadows that the first light of morning would erase.

  Over the next three weeks, Spinneretta gradually began to spend more time with Mark. Though she was first drawn to the air of mystery about him, as well as the hope of uncovering more about the enigmatic Warren family, she learned little that was concrete or even remotely believable. His small collection of bizarre books, while creepy and morbidly fascinating, proved the reality of neither the Warren cult nor magic. Mark, however, did not seem particularly invested in convincing her, and that detachment made her all the more curious. Conversely, he had a deep interest in her own life and those of her siblings; it had been a long time since anybody had seemed so interested in the lives of a bunch of half-spiders, and she indulged him to the extent that she could.

  Soon, Spinneretta started thinking of him as a weird, if endearing, friend. When he was not out on vague errands or helping May with the housework, she would find ways to justify spending time with him. He was oddly charismatic. Even if he spoke in semicolons, the formality of his mannerisms fascinated her. Often they would speak of nothing of import, and sometimes she managed to convince him to watch movies with her, which was when she learned that the medium was almost completely foreign to him. What had his life been like, if he’d never watched a movie for recreation? Or was that, too, part of some weird role he was playing?

  Regardless, Spinneretta enjoyed the company. It was a rare reminder of how she’d felt six years ago, before she’d pushed all but her closest friends away from her and retreated beneath her olive jacket.

  Chapter 6

  Candy From a Baby

  Simon Dwyre sat alone at his polished redwood desk. The lights were off, but the closed blinds cast slivers of illumination across the book before him. The doors were locked. The phone was unplugged. All was quiet. It was just him and his precious tome. Eyes fluttering, he read again the verse of promise, and felt a rush of anticipation coming over him. He’d read the scriptures from cover to cover hundreds of times since he was a child, but no portion so thrilled him as the passages describing Zigmhen, the World on the Web.

  Those pages expounded upon the boundless string-like worlds, which wove together into a fantastic and unimaginable cosmic pattern. The images penned by Repton the Younger himself, depicting ancient rock and strata shaped into spires long abandoned by the hollow servitors of Nayor and the forefathers, never failed to impress him. The blades of light cutting across the pages seemed suggestive of the mystic glow of the dim stars alleged to orbit that realm. He could imagine the carpet of his office as the infinite sands and cobbles formed from the broken remnants of entire worlds.

  It was the singular desire to see the wastes and ruins with his own eyes—not the eyes of those who had come before him—that invoked his endless devotion. It fueled his manic obsession with advancing the will of Nayor, so the covenant could be fulfilled and he may at last set foot through the fog-gate and into forbidden Zigmhen. That was the endgame, the promise. As he partook again of the descriptions of Zigmhen’s splendor, all his worries of management and deadlines seemed to fade away.

  That is, until the shadows on the walls began to melt. His eyes snapped at once to the swirling patterns of darkness as they billowed and raced along the walls and floor toward the center of the office. There, the shadows deepened and coalesced into a pitch-dark pu
ddle. A shape rose from out of that shadow, and the ink-black stain dripped away as it took the form of a man wrapped in a yellow robe.

  Simon scowled at the intruder. “How dare you interrupt me?”

  The man-thing in the robe did not move at first. He just stared at Simon from beneath his cowl. Simon needed no light at all to know that Kaj was unhappy. At last, the creature reached up and drew back his hood, in what was surely meant as a sign of amicability. Kaj had always been a sycophant. He strode closer to Simon’s desk and lowered himself into the chair opposite him. The light from the blinds fell upon the Vant’therax’s face, revealing translucent skin stretched tight over malformed bone growth and black spikes of chitin protruding from the flesh of his neck.

  For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then, Kaj leaned over the desk with a sneer on his frail lips. “Even in these important times, you never fail to find time to read.”

  Simon frowned. Perhaps he didn’t mean to be amicable after all. It was rare to hear such contempt from Kaj. He sighed and interlocked his fingers, returning the sneer. “Is it not enough that I am taking action on your behalf? What more do you want?”

  The creature’s lips trembled. He blinked slowly with his two functional eyes, and the four dead, lidless orbs splashed asymmetrically across his face quivered as they tried to copy the motion. “On our behalf is precisely the problem. We have little time remaining. Why do you rely upon worthless men to carry out this duty?” Kaj tilted his head to the side, anger trembling in every line of his ancient-looking face. “Let us do this.”

  “Do you understand what we risk if you were to be seen by the public? If you want them to be taken so badly, then do not complain when I see it done, you impatient knaves.”

  Kaj shook his head, gray eyes flashing with disgust. “Once we have them, it no longer matters who knows of us. As soon as the King—”

  “It matters,” Simon said in a gravelly tone, “if the children of the Fifth cannot fulfill our needs. Even if we claim them, we may still find ourselves awaiting the completion of the Eleventh Project.”

  “The children are sufficient,” Kaj said, a wave of decay washing over Simon.

  Simon conceded a meager nod to the creature. “Yes. In theory, they are sufficient. But they are not ideal.”

  Kaj emitted a low rumble from deep in his chest. “Let. Us. Do this.”

  “You will wait until I have need of you,” Simon said, unimpressed by the creature’s show of aggression.

  The thing rose to his feet, his robe billowing about him. “Do not test our patience, Conduit! I came in diplomacy. If you will not listen to reason, then next time it may be Nal who shows up to speak with you.”

  Simon stood, staring his intruder down. “And what will Nal do? Kill me?”

  Kaj said nothing. His lips curled down into a venomous crescent, teeth bared in challenge.

  Simon jerked a thumb at the wall. “Get out of here. Tell the other Vant’therax that they are to stay put. My men will deal with the child. That is final.”

  Kaj hissed and turned about, stomping toward the door. He pulled his hood back up over his head and froze in the middle of the room. With hate-filled eyes, he glanced back over his shoulder. “Do not underestimate His children,” he said. With that, the shadows roiled up from the floor and coated him in their inky depths once more. With a dark flash, Simon was alone again.

  Simon sighed and sank back into his chair. He ran his fingers through his graying hair, eyes drawn again to the light beams crossing the pages of the Repton Scriptures. The damned Vant’therax. They wanted to take the easiest path to the Coronation, with no regard for the consequences. Though he needed the Vant’therax, he found their incessant demand for progress draining. Frankly, even if today’s operation failed, he personally would not care. If he could not reclaim the Fifth, the Eleventh would more than suffice when the scientists nurtured the latest specimens to maturity. Project Eleven was his holy grail; the Fifth was little more than a contingency plan, never meant to see the protocol to completion.

  His gaze drifted up to the digital clock on his desk. 5:49. Eleven minutes until action. It had been six years since his men last attempted to take one of the Fifth, under the badgering of the Vant’therax. Any suspicion that may have fallen over them in that time had surely evaporated. He knew there was no risk in today’s operation, and it would keep the robed things in check, content. And yet he could not calm the twinge of paranoia that racked his nerves. Palms coated in sweat, he stood again and opened the blinds, blinking back the harsh light. Below, the pines of Parson’s Grove stretched to the horizon. He needed a drink before the stress killed him.

  If Kara were to make a list of the five things she hated the most, spots one through three would be reserved for soccer, soccer, and freaking soccer. Wednesdays and Fridays were soccer practice at Peninsula Park, and no matter how many times she threatened to hang herself in her own web, Mom never let her skip it. It wasn’t like she needed the exercise, and she couldn’t kick the ball to save her life. She loved the outdoors, but she had those at home, so what was the point? It all just sucked. Plus, she got the distinct impression she was only on the team as something of a novelty, or poster child of acceptance. It wasn’t like Widow’s Creek had any spiders on their team, after all.

  Kara sighed, leaning against the birch tree nearest the small parking lot, where a slalom of iron posts lined the sidewalk. The park’s soft grass fields wrapped about in all directions toward the surrounding woodland. She liked it here, but her ineptitude at sports filled it with an oppressive air. Why did her mom always have to be late picking her up, on top of everything else? She just wanted to get home and start the weekend. If she’d brought a book to practice she could have at least read while waiting, but without a silken hammock to lie in it wouldn’t be the same.

  Her stomach growled at her. She rocked to her feet, restlessly stretching her spider legs to and fro. She glanced about at the park’s emerald glow, which was now tinted yellow by the sinking sun. Coach McGuire and the rest of the team were already gone, and the park was now all but empty. The only people left besides her were a pair of young kids digging holes in a sand pit near the trees. Them, and the smoking man in the puke-yellow jacket at the far end of the field who’d been lurking in the trees since practice began. She briefly watched him over her shoulder, her blond bangs falling over her eyes. The man was above average in height, but his coat concealed his true size. His hair was black with speckles of gray, and thick lines chiseled his young-yet-old face where his skin had sunken. What was with that guy? Anyone who could wear a jacket that heavy in this heat was mad as a mercury blacksmith.

  The coated weirdo made no motion, and so Kara ignored him and put her focus back where she needed it: her snarling stomach.

  Across the park, Piedman watched as the spider-blonde went about her waiting business. The smoldering filter between his lips stained his ragged, uneven breaths with nicotine. He kept trying to think of some excuse, some reason why he should turn on his heel and leave without finishing the job, but there was no faster way to wind up in a coffin. He’d been the one to draw the proverbial short straw. If he chickened out now, Gauge would probably crush his skull in that grotesque claw of his before he could choke out an I tried, but.

  It wouldn’t be that bad. It couldn’t be. This was far from the worst thing he’d ever done, but the thought of what happened if it all went pear-shaped still terrified him. He’d been provided a weapon, but the last thing he wanted was another murder on his record. Or conscience. His record didn’t matter much at this point. Either way, time was almost up. The girl’s mother consistently arrived late, always around fifteen-past. It was twelve-past, and he either needed to act now or make peace with God. The pines swayed in the gentle breeze, needles dancing in unison. He chewed the filter of his burned-out cigarette. He had no choice in the matter. It wasn’t like it was his decision. It was bitter medicine, so he’d drink it down in a single gulp and chase it with a bottl
e of rye.

  With a focused severity, he started out from the trees, his boots trampling the standing blades of grass. Straight ahead, past the empty pavilion, right by the birch in front of the parking lot. The girl wasn’t looking. It was time.

  A white pigeon, or perhaps a dirty dove, landed atop a nearby lamp post which rose twenty feet into the air. Kara wondered if she could climb to the top and take it down before it got away. The bird cooed into the breeze and took to cleaning its wing. With a smirk, Kara stretched her spider legs. She bent her knees, her four posterior legs scratching at the ground. Her legs drank in the rich smell of the turf. She eyed the pigeon-dove jealously, and her stomach rumbled again. Could go for a little snack before dinner.

  She was about to dart off toward the lamp post when the pigeon leapt from its perch and took flight again. Kara relaxed her legs and cursed her indecisiveness. If only she’d taken the opportunity before the yellow man had gotten too close and scared it away. Oh well. She turned to look at the man in the awful coat marching toward her. His haste was purposeful, his eyes set on her.

  At once, it clicked. The reason he’d been lurking in the trees since practice began. The reason he’d stayed there acting all stealthy until she was alone. It was obvious now: he was a bad man, and she was his target. She’d heard horror stories intended to terrify children but never thought she would be in such a situation herself. She smiled, something dark in the back of her mind beginning to grow restless and wild.

  That’s it, girl, don’t move a muscle. Piedman picked up the pace, breaking into a run. He made eye contact with her, and he nearly choked. But it was too late to change his mind. He closed in on the small monster-girl, who looked up at him with an innocent smile on her face. Fuckin’ stupid girl, he thought. Didn’t your mommy ever teach you about strangers?