The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1)

by Bartholomew Lander

  But liking him would just complicate things, she thought with a sigh. Especially in the middle of this yellow-coated spider-cult shit.

  So you admit that that’s what you want?

  I didn’t say that.

  Sounded like it to me. What’s wrong with him, besides being mathematically insignificant family?

  It wasn’t the question she’d expected to come of this undiscussion. But now that she was forced to think about it, she was unable to find a satisfactory response. I guess nothing.

  Can we agree that he’s good looking, then?

  I guess, I don’t know.

  Interesting?

  As interesting as a wizard could be, I suppose.

  You’re comfortable with him.

  That one didn’t come out as a question. Yeah. There’s that. There was something calming about the hours she’d spent up late talking with him in the study. It was a comfort she couldn’t attribute to anything in particular, but there was no reason for it to go any further than the friendship they’d developed. But on the other hand, there were worse things than falling in love, weren’t there?

  She wrapped her extra legs around her chest, feeling a growing warmth in her core. Her mind went quiet and she tightened her legs. It was useless to argue with herself. She knew herself better than anyone.

  Alright, she thought, you win. I don’t know if it’s a mistake or not, but maybe that’s alright. The room darkened around her by degrees, and soon she found herself drifting toward sleep. She felt a warm peace spreading over her from the resolution, sub-optimal though it may have been. That peace she found with herself would continue on past the night and become stronger as the days passed, until she was at ease with her reality.

  “Spins, you really missed out on the fight,” Chelsea said at lunch the next day.

  Spinneretta poked at the slab of artificial pizza on her tray. “I’m sure it was fantastic.”

  “Even I have to admit, it was pretty cool,” Amanda said, though without Chelsea’s sensationalistic tone. “You know how people always say—”

  “He did it with one hand behind his back!” Chelsea yelled. “Like, that Norman kid just had no chance! It was amazing!”

  “I bet.” Spinneretta wasn’t interested in Arthr and his triumphant hypocrisy. Not only was it so much bitter, viscous medicine rolling down her throat, but it was especially unwelcome after her introspection the previous night.

  “Did something happen yesterday?” Amanda asked.

  “N-no. I’m just not in the mood to hear about how great Arthr is at everything.”

  “Did you guys have another fight?”

  “Not exactly. I’m just getting really tired of him.” She sighed. After their last few meetings, she intended to ignore Arthr for as long as possible.

  “Hey Spins,” Chelsea said.

  “What?”

  “Do you think Arthr would date an older girl?”

  “Oh Jesus, Chelsea! You can’t be serious!”

  “What? Don’t tell me you’re one of those nobody-can-date-my-family types.”

  “It’s not about that,” Spinneretta said. “There’s a thing called having standards.”

  “Oh chill out, Spins, I’m not even serious,” Chelsea said unconvincingly. “On an unrelated note, do you know if there’s a rule about taking lowerclassmen to prom?”

  “I guess you can wonder about it next year,” Spinneretta said, taking a bite of a rock-hard dinner roll.

  Amanda looked up from the book on Mothman she was reading. “Oh, you didn’t hear? This year they’re supposedly letting juniors attend the senior prom, too.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Apparently some of the parents complained about the school’s eagerness to find excuses to cut the junior prom from the budget. Since their funding is as low as ever, it looks like they’re going to compromise by letting us attend with the seniors.”

  “Makes you wonder why they didn’t just do that in the first place, instead of coming up with half-baked excuses,” Spinneretta said.

  Amanda shrugged. “Liability? Venue rental? Either way, that just means more fun for us, right?”

  Spinneretta took a bite of her rubbery pizza. “Oh-ho, mega wrong, Mandy.” She made a mental note to make sure her mother never heard about this development; the last thing she wanted was Mom thinking there was any chance of her attending.

  “Wait, you don’t want to go?” Chelsea said.

  Spinneretta glared at her. “And this surprises you why, exactly?”

  Chelsea blinked. “Because all girls want to go to prom?”

  “Oh, of course. I can’t believe I forgot such a basic tenet of biology.”

  “I thought you always wanted to go to prom,” Amanda said, confused. “We used to watch those rom-coms at Chelsea’s—”

  “Please don’t call them that.”

  “Whatever. You used to look forward to our prom back then, is the point. I’m pretty sure you said you wouldn’t be the type to wait around for a guy to ask you, and that you’d be the assertive one when the time came.”

  “Yeah, but that was a very dark time of my life.”

  “Oh, come on!” Chelsea said. “Let down your hair and take your glasses off with us!”

  Spinneretta tried not to laugh at the stale running joke but failed. “I will not. Go and have fun without me, I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you planning on being this anti-social forever?” Chelsea asked, frustrated.

  “If I can help it.” The statement was, in some ways, depressing. She never used to be so cynical. Not until she’d let herself run from Will, despite the strange killing adrenaline pounding through her veins. But in any case, she didn’t even have anyone to go to that narcissism fair with, so thinking about it was just a waste of biochemical energy. It wasn’t like she liked anyone. Anyone at the school, anyways, she thought, gulping a little at the awkward warmth that thought invoked. “Oh, that reminds me, Chels,” she said, perking up at once. “I have your cookies.”

  Chapter 13

  Portents

  When Annika answered the door to her motel room after the second knock, the ferocity with which the door flew open made Mark jump back in fright. “You’re late!” she cried. “Get in here.” Her slim fingers took him by the collar and dragged him into the darkness within.

  The door banged shut behind him, and Annika pulled away. Still disoriented from being jerked inside so abruptly, Mark glanced around the dim room. Dusty lights burned, revealing piles of folders, paperwork, and photographs covering the desk and bed, and even spilling onto the floor. He brushed away the creases from where she’d grabbed him. “Well, you certainly seem to have been busy. What have you found out?”

  “A whole lot of nothing.” She pulled a thin blade from her pocket and gestured at a monochrome photograph pinned to the opposite wall. “But let’s start with the kidnapping. This guy right here. Isaac Piedman. The fingerprints and blood were his, so logic says he was the one who abducted this spider-girl, or whatever. The only problem: he’s supposed to be dead.”

  Mark gazed into the stubble-encrusted man’s emotionless eyes. “Dead?”

  “Went digging through the county records a couple days ago. I won’t go too deep into his record, but the takeaway is that he was sentenced to death in 1993. But instead of being shipped off to San Quentin to wait to die—as he should have been—he was silently kept at the local prison. And that’s where his story ends.”

  “Ends? How can that be?”

  Annika flipped the knife in her hand. “That prison, San Solano, was privately owned. Private prisons are grotesquely immune to disclosure laws.” She swept her hand and sent the knife flying into the center of Piedman’s face with a fierce howl. A satisfied gasp. “And even if they weren’t, all signs point to the prison being abandoned, and the company responsible for it has all but dropped off the earth. Law or not, can’t dredge any info out of nothing. So, with a ghost on the loose and a whole prison seemingly abandon
ed, I started digging through old newspapers and building permits to see if I could scrounge up anything worth chasing.”

  “And? Anything?”

  With a sigh, she leaned back and slipped another knife from a strap about her ankle. “Not really. Found out the guy who founded Low Hills Correctional was murdered in the seventies. I wish I were lying when I say that’s the most relevant thing I found.” She shrieked and let the second knife fly. It struck the handle of the first and bounced off with a dull thwack. She sighed and went to pick the blade up. “So, hate to say it, but unless you’re satisfied with a figurative ghost did it, I’m at a dead end in terms of the kidnapping. Now, as for this little half-spider problem. I went ahead and pulled Ralphie’s medical records. Did you know he had nine separate genetic tests at different clinics between 1996 and 2001?”

  Mark could only shake his head in confusion. “I can’t say I did. What does that—”

  “Oh, then I suppose it wouldn’t interest you to hear that every clinic he went to is coincidentally bankrolled by the same organization.”

  “What?”

  She cackled and turned to face him with a mischievous look in her eyes. “Oh, yes. That’s right. West Valley Medical, a non-profit with shockingly little information available, appears to own—or at least fund—every hospital within two hundred miles of here.”

  Mark stared at her in disbelief. “That is absurd. How? And how has nobody noticed this before?”

  She shrugged. “Well, keep in mind, it’s not always the same name. Sometimes it’s by proxy or a fictitious business name, but if you follow the footsteps in the sand it all leads back to West Valley Medical. I’m no bureaucrat, Marky; just a girl with a weird feeling about this town and everything about it.”

  Mark eased himself into one of the empty chairs around the paperwork war zone of the desk. “Do you think this West Valley Medical has something to do with the spider children?”

  Annika flipped her knife as she walked back over to him, eyes fixed upon the wild spread of documents. “Nine genetic tests at nine genetic clinics all came back genetically spider. That shouldn’t have happened, although I can’t yet say if this medical company connecting them is any more than a coincidence. But I’ll tell you one thing: in any sane world, those children should have been on every front page from Santa Fe to Malmö when they were born.”

  He nodded. “I have thought the same thing. Do you yet have any theories of why the birth doctors would not report it? All I can think of is that this medical corporation which owns the hospital and the clinics . . . ”

  Annika was staring at a sheet of paper filled with data and dense, illegible text. At the top was a professional photograph of a middle-aged man with thick-rimmed glasses. After a few silent moments, a chuckle came to her lips. “Well. Why don’t we find out? It’s about time I make an appointment with an OB-GYN anyway.”

  “So, I’ve got another fight coming up,” Arthr said.

  “I’m literally astounded that you think I care.” Spinneretta once again sat in her desk chair. She tapped her pen against the edge of the desk, waiting for her uninvited guest to leave her in peace.

  “You’ll want to hear this, though.” Pride exploded from his bright eyes. “This time, it’s that pig-faced fuck’s older brother. Norm’s friends brought me the challenge today. Felt like being king for a day and having the villagers’ grievances brought forth on a silver platter.”

  “Uh-huh.” She stopped feigning mere indifference and resumed writing her latest draft of her genealogy essay, which had gradually become a castle of lies.

  “Should’ve heard the way they were talking about it. Trying to be all intimidating, like I should be all scared or some shit. Apparently the dude’s furious and wants to beat the life out of me for trashing his little bro.”

  “I hope he succeeds. Maybe then you’ll stop acting so damn self-important.”

  “Nothing to do with self-importance,” he said. “It’s just the collector in me wanting to take the whole set. First Norm, then Patrick, and if there’s an even older brother then I’ll be sure to—”

  “Wait,” Spinneretta said, putting her hostility on hold. A foreboding quiver raced along her scalp. “Did you just say Patrick?”

  “Yeah, what of it?”

  The echo of their previous conversation rang in her head, and she heard him speaking the pig-kid’s name once more, loud and clear: You know that Rhodes kid from school, right? “Patrick, as in Patrick Rhodes?” It was only a question in the loosest sense of the word. She shook her head, hoping she was wrong.

  “Yep. Sounds right to me.”

  “No. No, no, no, no, Arthr, that is a bad, bad idea. Do you even know who that is?”

  He gave a sarcastic smirk. “The brother of the trashcan I shit-stomped, from the sounds of it.”

  “Arthr, listen to me.” She gave him a sincere, pleading look. “You cannot fight him. Pat Rhodes is bad, bad news. He was a senior when I was a freshman, Arthr. Everyone, even the teachers, said he’d been held back from graduation twice. Do you know what that means? He has to be at least twenty-two by now!”

  “Oh no,” he said in a bored tone. “I guess I can’t beat him up then; might get sued for fucking up an old man.”

  “Arthr, he was huge; he must have been at least six feet tall, probably even taller. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he weighed four hundred pounds. You might think that gives you an edge, but a damn good portion of that weight was muscle. You’d be better off picking a fight with a gorilla.” Scattered, nauseating memories of the giant poked at the walls of her mind. More than just a gorilla, she remembered him quite lucidly as that brain-dead dirtbag gorilla that kept making passes on Chelsea.

  Arthr’s eyes, meanwhile, grew brighter. “Well, if he really is that big, then there’s no way I can turn down the fight.”

  “What?”

  “Think about it! My reputation will explode when I take him down,” he said, a wide smile on his face.

  “Oh, Jesus. Can you stop thinking about your fucking ego for one second and listen to reason? You could get really hurt if you pick a fight with someone like him!”

  “It has nothing to do with my ego. It’s about overcoming every obstacle thrown at me and never backing down from a challenge. It’s about proving that I’m the best, and making sure everyone else knows it. It’s about my reputation.”

  “You literally just described your ego!”

  “Look,” he said through his teeth. “You can call it whatever you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to fight him. I’m going to beat him. And when I do, you can consider yourself lucky to be one of the only people who doubted me. In fact, I’ll be sure that everyone knows what a fucking coward you are. Oh no, please, Arthr, don’t fight him, he’s too strong for you!” he said in the highest falsetto he could summon. “Then everyone will know how fucking soft you are, and how stupid you were for trying to get between me and victory.”

  Spinneretta shook her head, stunned. “I don’t know why I even bother with you. You’d dive into a pool of acid if you thought it would give your reputation a boost. Go ahead, fight him, I don’t care anymore. I wish you the best.”

  Arthr clicked his tongue. “You know what your problem is?”

  Before he could continue, Spinneretta was out of her chair and in his personal space, glaring at him from mere inches away. “I do know what my problem is. It’s got two arms, ten legs, and a pride as big as Minnesota. And it doesn’t know when to take a fucking hint and get out of my room. The conversation is over; you told me your fantastic news. So why don’t you just go off and pretend that I was elated?”

  “Jesus, what’s got under your skin?” He stepped back and returned her glare. “Are you just constantly on your period these days, or what?”

  Spinneretta snapped. In a single fluid motion she slapped Arthr across the face while her plated legs seized him about the shoulders. Struck by the abrupt force of her response, Arthr couldn’
t muster a meaningful resistance as she shoved him through the door and out into the hall. She released him with a heave of her shoulders, and he stumbled back a step, disorientated.

  “I’m amazed anyone wants to date you if you think you can just talk to girls like that,” she spat.

  Arthr rubbed his bright cheek. “You’re just jealous because unlike you I can get a date.”

  Spinneretta ground her teeth. “I hope Patrick smashes your head in.” Arthr opened his mouth, no doubt to make an arrogant boast about his own capabilities, but Spinneretta grabbed the door and slammed it shut. For a brief moment she just stood next to the door, seething, her palm on fire. When her temper had fallen from the rolling boil to a steady simmer, she threw herself on her bed and pressed a pillow into the hot skin of her face. Maybe Mark would be able to cheer her up when he got back from wherever he’d disappeared to. Unable to tolerate the brooding silence, she decided to listen to angry music while she waited for him to return.

  Simon had fought through the tedium of yet another day of paperwork. Invoices, reports, blank pieces of paper inked into landscapes of Zigmhen by his boredom. With the last of his corporate work finished for the day, he took a moment to recline his head upon his leather chair. His thoughts turned to the Repton Scriptures, still hidden within his desk. But he had no time to read. The latest results of the Eleventh Project were awaiting his approval down below. He began the arduous task of getting to his feet, and just as soon as he’d claimed his balance his phone began to ring.

  In a moment of panic, he tore the unsilenced phone from his pocket and checked the number. Isaac Piedman. Three unheard messages from other members of NIDUS blinked from above the name. With a glance at the door to make sure he would not be disturbed, he flipped the phone open and brought it close. “Hello?” he said in a near whisper.

  A brief moment of silence, and then a low laugh broke, like a curtain opening before an opera. “Hello, Mr. Dwyre.”