Red Web

by Ninie Hammon

  How did she hear the doorbell in here? He hadn't heard it. Did the thing — she, Shannuck, Melody, whatever — have all the faculties of both species? Human hearin', but on the degree of magnitude granted by the spider part of a "blended species"? It could think like a human, speak, laugh — if you could call the sound it made laughter.

  What else could it do?

  Better questions: where had it gone and when was it comin' back?

  He looked around for it, tryin' to look everywhere at once which resulted in seeing nothin' at all. His heart was hammerin' a hole in his ribcage, part from his own terror, part courtesy of the venom in his veins. If he got bit again, a coronary could very well be in T.J. Hamilton's immediate future.

  He turned to Bailey. She was looking around fearfully, too. That was a good sign. She was aware enough, human enough, Bailey enough to be scared spitless about what might happen next.

  Then she went blank, left the building. Only for a moment this time, though. When she blinked back into reality, made real eye contact with him, she grabbed his arm and tried to speak. But she couldn't, could only look up.

  T.J. followed her gaze.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Segmented reality. Color gone, just shadows — black, white and gray. The buzzing sound. Hissing. Angry, furious. The bugs are down there waiting for Shannuck.

  With both his eyes focused forward, he sees them right below him in the cage, looking around, trying to find him. He crawls quietly down toward them, stops to jam a piece of the web into the elevator cable housing. He will kill them, twist their heads off their bodies and watch the blood pour out their ragged necks onto his legs where he can smell it, warm blood. He will rip them apart, tear them into little pieces.

  Bailey was standing beside T.J., watching the horror descend on them.

  No, no, she couldn't look at it for another second or she would go mad, so she focused on T.J. instead. He'd looked up when she grabbed his arm, saw what she saw coming at them, and was staring transfixed at the monstrosity climbing head-first down out of the web overhead and onto the top of the elevator cage.

  Bailey grunted. In her mind, she screamed, shrieked, but the only sound she could make was a grunt. She felt her head turning, her eyes moving almost against her will away from T.J.'s face to behold the thing that could not possibly hold onto the elevator cage like that but it did, the same way a spider held on. Then it turned and righted itself and she was looking out through the bars at the horror of a human face that had been transformed into a spider — not three feet away.

  The mouth opened and the stink of the breath was so disgusting Bailey felt bile rise instantly into her throat and she was unable to swallow it back. But she had already vomited up everything in her stomach, so she merely stood gaping at the creature, dry-heaving into the back of her throat.

  "You die. You bleed. I crush, kill." The hoary words came from the ruin of a mouth and she felt T.J. shudder beside her.

  "Stab your eyes, rip your head, crush your brains."

  Then the set of spider legs that belonged to the human Melody McCallum, the ones with hands in black gloves grasping the bars of the cage, began to spread the bars apart. Bailey heard the metal groan as the creature bent them. It seemed to take no effort at all. In moments, the spider creature would pull the bars far enough apart to crawl inside the cage with them and rip them to pieces. It would—

  Bailey fell out of the world.

  And into the spider.

  Maybe it was the state of mind of the spider — its whole being gearing up for slaughter — that caused the kaleidoscope of images, no scene, no consistent narrative, just images swirling around and around in a frenzy, moving faster and faster like some manic merry-go-round with demon horses and monster riders.

  Fractured vision.

  Black and white.

  Out front, a small bug. A little boy. Riley smiling as he runs across the hallway from the bathroom. He walks along beside the spider talking, but there are no words in the silence of the spider's head. The boy holds a sack of books and stands waiting as the trunk of the car opens. Then the spider reaches out and grabs the bug, snaps his neck in a single flash of movement, tosses him like a doll into the trunk and closes the lid.

  Jagged images.

  A black-and-white landscape out a car window. Trees, bushes, bugs crawling, children-bugs, crawling over the landscape. Hate the bugs, kill the bugs.

  The car stops, the spider beckons. A little girl gets up from beside other bugs and approaches. She is smiling. The spider lunges out the car window, puts one hand on the top of the wall and uses the other to grab the bug. It snaps her neck and hauls her off the ground and in through the car window in seconds.

  Walls and floors and racks of clothing. The spider crawls, hunting, seeking prey.

  A small bug sits in a shopping cart. The spider takes it, breaks its neck, jams it into a bag and zips the bag shut.

  Bugs in a cage, Shannuck is filled with loathing and rage and power and strength. He will kill the bugs — now!

  Bailey breathed stink. Her head swam, the ache of spider bites on her arm and neck was a faraway, distant pain she didn't attend to as she watched Shannuck spread apart the bars of the elevator cage.

  Seconds, just seconds and it would be over.

  Then the spider stopped, froze in place, and an instant later it was skittering away, up off the cage of the elevator and into the rigging. It scuttled in seconds up the web into the shadows and vanished.

  A breath carrying something like a strangled sob burst from T.J. beside her. She turned to him. Only she didn't turn. She had come loose again, the wires yanked apart. She was inside Bailey, but it felt like a temporary thing. Her self didn't live here anymore. It was not attached to this body, to these senses. She had no more control over these arms and legs … or thoughts or memories … than she did over Shannuck. She was just along for the ride.

  T.J. turned back to the button on the wall and punched it. Nothing happened. He punched it again and again. Held it in. Nothing. The cage didn't move. He looked around, above the cage.

  "She jammed the cable up there." He pointed to the piece of rigging that had been dragged over to the cable and stuffed in around it so it wouldn't move. "It won't go up or down. We're stuck."

  The words were only sounds without meaning. Bailey looked at him, watched him from inside the Bailey body. Felt nothing.

  Brice pulled his cruiser off the road and drove slowly down the winding lane to The Cedars, through stately trees that had begun to sway slightly in the growing wind. He'd been here a couple of times before, once answering a call when two of the tenants got into a brawl. A second when an Italian man named Tony Something had gotten drunk and was chasing his wife around the ballroom on the second floor, threatening her with a broken wine bottle because he had found texts on her phone from another man. Gratefully, Tony Something had been very drunk, his wife sober enough to dial 911. Then she'd managed to stay ahead of him in the ballroom, climbing up the spiral staircases and crossing the bridges between the theatre boxes on the walls until help arrived.

  Of course, she refused to press charges. That happened way more often than most people would believe. The man had been threatening to kill her, tried to kill her, would likely have succeeded if he hadn't been so drunk and clumsy. But he blubbered his apologies, said he was sorry, he loved her, he didn't mean … yada, yada, yada. The couple had moved away shortly after that and Brice didn't know what had happened to them. He sincerely hoped Mrs. Tony Something had managed to keep her abusive husband drunk enough to stay out of his grasp.

  Pulling to a stop under the portico of the stately home, Brice sat looking at the residence. T.J.'s car was parked beside Dobbs's Jeep in the paved area under the overhanging roof.

  Bailey hadn't actually said she was on her way to Melody's, but it wasn't hard to deduce this was where she'd come. She was here, now. So were T.J. and Dobbs, though they hadn't traveled here together.

  On the
way into town Brice had tried to call all three of them. Tried several times. None of them answered.

  Why not?

  He almost read through Zankoski's report a third time, as if going over it one more time would make sense out of all the things that didn't make sense. Coincidences? Seriously? Three men dead — a mental patient, an abusive orderly and Melody McCallum's husband. All killed with extreme violence. By whom? Not a shred of evidence in any one of the murder cases. Nothing close to a suspect.

  And what possible connection could murders years ago — one in Ohio, one in West Virginia and one in the Bahamas — have to the kidnapping of three children here, now? The only connection of any kind that hooked all the disconnected pieces together was the little girl named Caitlyn Whitfield a.k.a. Riley Campbell's teacher, Melody McCallum.

  He started to get out of the car but stopped.

  Teacher.

  Then he did open the report again but didn't read the whole thing. Just scanned down to the part where Zankoski described Melody's employment history. After she graduated from Pitt, she got a job in Shadow Rock at Madison Elementary School — the school where Christi Strickland was currently a fifth-grade student. Three years ago, Melody McCallum had been a second-grade teacher there.

  That little girl had smiled at whoever it was who'd beckoned to her from the other side of that rock fence yesterday afternoon.

  He sat for a moment, trying to figure out where he was going with all this. Then he placed another call.

  "Twice Told Tales, can I help you?" said a gruff voice on the other end of the line.

  "This is Sheriff McGreggor. I want to double check something. It's about some books that were dropped off there on Wednesday—"

  "More than two hours! That's how long the street was blocked in front of my store when all the parents went barreling down to the school. It was a mess, customers couldn't—"

  "Melody McCallum brought some books to your store right after lunch—"

  "One of your deputies already talked to me about that — a nice fellow named Fletcher. He wanted to know if she'd brought the books like she said, and I told him yeah, showed him — two boxes full of paperbacks and a few more in a grocery sack."

  Brice let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. That's what Fletch had reported. And Brice didn't really believe Melody—

  "She did it the same as she did last year, but there were more books this time."

  "Did what the same?"

  "Left the books out back, but I haven't gotten around to counting—"

  "She left the books? She didn't give them to you?"

  "No, I got a voicemail saying she'd dropped them off. We did the same thing last year. There's a drop box by the back door we check every morning to see if somebody's donated—"

  "So you don't know when she left the books?"

  "Doesn't matter to me. They were clearly marked, a first-grade teacher's printing is perfect."

  Brice thanked the man and hung up.

  Then he sat. Melody could have dropped off the books at the store during second recess just like she said she did. But she could have deposited them in that drop box some other time — late Wednesday afternoon, even Wednesday night — anytime before the owner checked the drop box the next morning.

  And If she didn't go to the bookstore, where did she go for thirty minutes right after Riley disappeared?

  Brice put the car in park, pocketed the keys, and inhaled the sweet smell of roses as he climbed the steps and rang the bell. He heard no sound, so maybe the button didn't work. Or maybe the door was so thick it was soundproof.

  No one answered. He punched the button again. About to ring it a third time, he heard a noise inside and the big door opened to reveal a small brunette woman with a smile as warm as a spring morning.

  "Is this about Riley? Have you found him?"

  Her face was an anguished mixture of fear and hope that seemed totally genuine. But she must have at least been acquainted with Christi Strickland even if the little girl hadn't been one of her second-grade students. Was it possible she hadn't heard Christi had been kidnapped, too? Possible.

  "No, I'm sorry. We still haven't located the boy." He paused for a beat. "Or the other two children."

  She didn't seem to hear him. He watched hope whoosh out of her, saw her grab hold of her emotions. "So, Sheriff—"

  "Brice, remember."

  "Brice, yes. Please come in."

  He stepped inside, holding his hat in his hands.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  This time, when Bailey fell out of reality, the world didn't fracture into misaligned pieces. It didn't drain of color to black, white and shades of gray. There were no side views to try to process with a human brain designed only to see forward.

  The eyes through which she looks see the foyer of The Cedars, the mirror there. The mirror reveals the image of a beautiful woman with hair the color of a square of caramel candy, dazzling blue eyes, wearing a black turtleneck. Melody!

  She is looking out through the eyes of Melody McCallum/Caitlyn Whitfield. Not Katydid. Not Shannuck. Another person altogether.

  This is a person who split off from the other two. Life began for Caitlyn/Melody two days before Halloween when she was nine years old. That's when she left Katydid hiding deep inside herself and came out into the world because a nurse had read to her, made her feel safe, a nurse who'd had a spider dangling from her witch's hat.

  Melody pauses in front of the mirror, runs her fingers through the curls of her ponytail. She takes a deep breath, smiles broadly, steps to the door and opens it.

  Brice is standing on the porch with his hat in his hand.

  "Is this about Riley? Have you found him?"

  Hope blossoms in Melody’s chest. Maybe the little boy is going to be alright after all. She has felt so terrible about his disappearance, would do anything, anything to help police find him. What could possibly have happened to him?

  "No, I'm sorry. We still haven't located the boy."

  She's so disappointed she struggles not to cry, misses what he says about some other children, fights back emotion, trying to get herself together. She is glad to see the sheriff, no matter why he has come. She likes him a lot.

  "So, Sheriff—"

  "Brice, remember."

  "Brice, yes. Please come in."

  He steps inside.

  "I don't know why you … stopped by, but I'm glad you did."

  He has a nice smile. A kind smile.

  Images flash into her mind. A man, tall and good-looking with curly blond hair, smiling at her. It is Darren, her husband. They are walking hand-in-hand on a deserted beach, joking about the lousy service they'd just gotten at a fancy restaurant.

  And then he hits her!

  It was the night they were attacked — the police said it must have been a gang. Right before Darren was murdered, she'd jokingly suggested he'd been flirting with the waitress, and he'd turned on her in a fury, hit her with his fist. Knocked her unconscious. When she woke up in the hospital, Darren was dead. Gone. And she had no way to frame what he had done in the final few moments of his life, couldn't even bring herself to tell the police about it. Her questions about Darren would never be answered. She had loved him so much, had been so devastated by his loss, that she hadn't so much as looked at another man since that horrible night.

  Until the day Brice came to the school to ask her questions about Riley.

  "Actually, Miss McCallum, a couple of things have come up that I need to ask you—"

  "Wait a minute. I thought we settled this. Brice and Melody — right?"

  "Okay, Melody, I was wondering—"

  "About your friends? They're here, you know."

  "Yes, I saw their cars parked outside, but they're not answering their phones."

  How kind he is to be so concerned about his friends! She knew he'd be kind. That first day when he was asking about Riley, she knew he was a good, kind man.

  "Of course they're not,"
she said with an engaging smile. "I can tell you why. In fact, I'll show you. They're upstairs in the ballroom."

  She indicates the staircase winding up the side of the wall to the double doors in the center of the second-floor balcony overlook.

  "Come with me." She takes his right arm, as if she were a bride and he were walking her down the aisle. She likes the feel of him next to her, so tall and strong. As they ascend the steps she tells him all about what T.J. and Bailey had said to her.

  "… and she said she paints pictures of, well, of what hasn't happened yet, and I'm sure she didn't expect me to believe her, but I know there are unexplainable things in the world."

  Like the blank spots in her memory. Almost all of yesterday is gone. She got up, dressed, got into her car to go to the grocery store. Then nothing. The next thing she knew, she was standing at the top of the stairs and it was evening. She went into the kitchen and saw that she hadn't gotten the groceries she'd left to get hours before. And this afternoon …

  "Bailey said she offered to paint Riley and you gave her that snapshot I gave you, but instead of painting Riley, she painted my portrait."

  Brice wrinkles his nose, as if he smells a bad odor.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "You don't smell …?"

  "Smell what?" She looks at him, uncomprehending.

  "That … never mind." Then he changes the subject. "The morning Riley was taken, you said you delivered the paperbacks to the bookstore. But the manager said you just left—"

  She doesn't want to talk about that. It's another hole in her memory. After she watched the boys walk down the hallway to the playground … her mind is blank. So she directs the conversation back to the painting.

  "Bailey said the portrait she painted of me wasn't one I would want to see. Have you seen it?"

  "As a matter of fact, I have. And she's right. You don't want to see it."

  They have arrived at the double doors.

  "You have to do the same thing I made Bailey, T.J. and Dobbs do," she says, as excited as one of her first-graders.