Spider Light

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Stay where you are,’ said Higgins, and hatchet-face fetched something that had been lying ready in an enamel bowl. At first Maud thought it was a bathing cap, fashioned from the same scratchy canvas as the gown, and wondered if they were protecting her shorn head from the hot water. They clamped the cap tightly down over her head, and Maud screamed, the sound echoing in the enclosed space. The cap was icily cold, and sent spears of pain slicing through her entire head.

  ‘Pounded ice,’ said Higgins. ‘You’re having the cold treatment, see. Hot to the body and cold to the head. Very effective.’

  ‘Only quarter of an hour, though,’ said hatchet-face. ‘Don’t want to…What is it we don’t want to do, Higgins?’

  ‘Inflame the membranes of the brain,’ said Higgins, reciting this parrot fashion. ‘And we replace the ice every five minutes.’

  Maud had no idea whether the two women followed this regime, because by the time they put the second application of ice on her head, she had already entered a world where there was no room for anything but the spiking pain in her temples. When finally they carried her back to her own room, she was dizzy with the contrast between the fiery heat in her limbs and the icy agony of her head. Thomasina and Simon were there, of course, still hammering their way out of Twygrist as they were on most days, but for once Maud could not pay them any attention.

  As the day stretched out and the light began to fade, she had the beginnings of an idea for escaping from this place. There was an irony about this, because it was almost as if the ice-cap had made her brain work again. Ways and means for escaping wreathed in and out of her mind: half-remembered snippets of things that had happened in Quire House; fragments of gossip and conversations and things found and heard. Little by little Maud began to see a way of getting out of Latchkill. And, what was even more important, she began to see a way of ensuring that she stayed out.

  As soon as Maud was sure she had the details clear in her mind, she set about putting her plan into action. She waited until the evening spider light lay thickly across Latchkill, and then tidied herself as well as she could without a mirror, combing her hair as neatly as possible. It would eventually grow to a decent length of course, but that might take months or years. In the meantime it felt dreadful. Like an urchin’s hair, or a beggar’s. Or a lunatic’s? But I’m not a lunatic, thought Maud angrily. How dare they treat me as if I am?

  She waited until she heard the clatter of the supper trays being brought round, and then sat in her usual corner, apparently staring at the wall. Her heart beat furiously but her hands were perfectly steady.

  Here came the footsteps along the passage, together with the rattle of the metal dishes. From the tread it sounded as if Nurse Higgins was on tray-duty tonight, which pleased Maud very much. She stayed absolutely still, listening as the door was unlocked and opened. It was Higgins. She brought with her the unappetizing smell of mutton stew.

  ‘Here’s your supper,’ she said, and stepped into the room to put down the tray. That was when Maud moved, springing forward and smashing the tray upwards so it slammed into the woman’s face. Hot glutinous gravy splashed across her eyes, and she cried out, and flung her hands to her face.

  Maud laughed triumphantly and snatched up the lidded enamel bucket which she had placed nearby, and brought it crashing down on Higgins’ head. There was the sound of a crunching blow and Higgins slid to the floor. A huge delight swept over Maud: this was the woman who had cut off all her hair and jeered, and who had exulted over those agonizing ice-cap treatments. Was she genuinely unconscious? Maud bent over to make sure. Yes, she was breathing in an unpleasant snorting way and a line of white showed under her eyes. Good.

  She half-carried, half-dragged the woman onto the bed, and arranged her so she was lying with her back to the door. Anyone looking in would think it was Maud herself, hunched up in one of her silent sulks, staring at the wall. Maud already knew it was quite usual for the nurses to ignore a patient who was withdrawn. ‘In a sulk again,’ they would say if they looked into the room. ‘Leave her alone for a few hours–she’ll soon be hungry enough to behave.’ But she had no idea how long it might be before Higgins was found, so it was important to move as quickly as possible. Once Higgins came round, she would raise the alarm anyway. That might be several hours, but it might be much less than that.

  Maud stared down at the woman, and saw she was wearing a cotton petticoat under her uniform. Within minutes she had torn three wide strips from it. One strip tied Higgins’ hands behind her back, a second tied her ankles together and the third formed a gag over the woman’s mouth. With the sheet pulled up, the gag and tied hands and feet could not be seen from the door. Now, even if Higgins came round quickly from the blow she would not be able to yell for help. Maud was very pleased with the way everything was working out. She looked down at Higgins again, wondering if she should put on the drab gown and apron, but thinking it might take too long. There was the cap, though: she could take that. She unpinned it from the woman’s head, and pulled it over her own short hair. She made sure the stored-away pills she had pretended to take were safely tied in her handkerchief, and tucked the handkerchief in the pocket of her gown.

  Then she wrapped her own cloak around her–the cloak she had been wearing the night they brought her here–and holding her head high as if she had nothing to fear, she walked into the dim passage, shutting the door of her room and drawing the bolt across.

  As she stole down the passage, she had the feeling that her mother was quite close to her, warning her to be careful. There were things inside spider light that you did not know existed–things that could suddenly pounce out on you.

  She found her way to the ground floor by a narrow staircase. Probably it had been a servants stairs in the days when Latchkill had been a privately owned house. It was difficult to imagine a family ever living here–children and parents and ordinary life.

  There was no-one around, and Maud thought she had chosen the time well. The nurses would still be serving the suppers or having their own meal–there was a big kitchen at the back where they all ate. But she still could not see any doors leading to the outside world. She hesitated at the foot of a wide, shallow staircase. Beneath the stairs, fixed to the wall, was a big notice and, although she was aware that anyone might come out and catch her at any minute, Maud paused for long enough to read what the notice said.

  The orders for the governing of the hospital, Latchkill, in the environs of Cheshire County, are exceeding good, and a remarkable instance of the good disposition of the governing Trust, especially the rules laid down, viz to wit:

  That no person, except the proper officers who tend them, be allowed to see the lunaticks of a Sunday.

  That no person be allowed to give the lunaticks strong drink, wine, tobacco or spirits, or to sell any such thing in the hospital.

  That no servant of the house shall take any money given to any of the lunaticks for their own use; but that it shall be carefully kept for them till they are recovered, or laid out for them in such things as the committee approves.

  That no officer or servant shall beat, abuse or offer any force to any lunatick, save on absolute necessity.

  It was the most terrible thing Maud had ever read in her life. It was as if whoever had written it thought people would come to Latchkill to view the patients just as they might go on a day-trip to a fairground to view the freaks in the sideshows. And worst of all, it gave sly permission for the nurses to ill-treat any of the patients.

  She could hear a faint clattering of crockery nearby, that must mean she was near the kitchens and therefore surely at the back of the house. There was the sound of a door being opened, and a cheerful voice calling out something about only another hour before going off duty, followed by the sound of quick footsteps on the stone floor. Maud glanced frantically about her. Several doors opened off, and one of them looked like a broom cupboard. Dare she risk opening it? Yes.

  It was a broom cupboard–there were pails a
nd mops, but better still, two nurses’ cloaks hung on a peg. Maud discarded her own cloak, and donned the Latchkill one. With the cap, she could surely pass as one of the staff.

  The sounds of voices had faded, and she stepped out into the passageway again. There, a little further along, was surely the door to the outside world she had sought. A huge heavy door it was–too heavy and huge to be an ordinary inside door. There were massive hinges and black iron bands across it–was that to keep people out, or to keep them in? No matter. Maud reached for the latch, praying it would not be locked and it was not: the handle turned easily, and the door opened.

  It was not the door leading outside! She was in another of the soulless passages and there was a stale, too-warm smell, like rotting vegetation. Maud beat down a wave of panic, because there was something dreadfully familiar about this.

  Something remembered or heard, or even dreamed.

  Dreamed…her old childhood nightmare of the black iron door that began to swing slowly open, and that you knew must be slammed back into place, because it was there to shut in something terrible.

  Maud pushed these thoughts away, and went determinedly on. But it was as if something that crouched at Latchkill’s heart had stirred into life, and the nightmare was closing around her again, like a huge knuckled hand gripping her throat so she could not breathe. I’m inside the nightmare again, she thought. Only this time I’m awake, and I shan’t be able to escape.

  She turned a corner of the passageway, and there it was: the black iron door. It was real; it was in front of her, massively hinged, and with a thick bolt drawn across.

  Maud was not going to open the door; of course she was not. But a little silvery voice deep inside her mind whispered that it would be better to know what the frightening thing was. Wouldn’t it be better to confront it once and for all, to stare it in the face and banish this nightmare for ever?

  No! It would be the worst thing in the world! But she saw with horror that her hand had developed a life of its own; it reached out to the immense bolt and drew it back. It moved smoothly and almost soundlessly, and the door was open. It swung slightly inwards.

  The first thing Maud was aware of was that the spider light was far thicker beyond the door than anywhere else in Latchkill. At first she was aware of a huge relief, because there was nothing so very terrible in here: a long table with plates and mugs on it, and a window high up in one wall. Maud frowned, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the light trickling through.

  When they did she thrust a fist into her mouth to stop herself screaming, because what she saw was impossible and terrifying and must be a nightmare after all. Such things did not exist!

  Drawn up to the long table were six or seven chairs, and seated on each of the chairs was a grotesque figure, bulky, repulsive, immense. Giant bodies and giant faces. Giant hands resting on giant knees, all sitting round their supper.

  They had heard the door open, because the huge huge heads with the overhanging brows turned to look at her.

  ‘A new little girl,’ said one of them in a clogged kind of voice.

  ‘A little girl-nurse to see us,’ said another. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ It got up from the chair and came lumbering towards her, massive hands outstretched.

  Of course this was what was beyond the black iron door, this was what had always been behind it, this was what mamma had warned her against.

  ‘…the dangerous thing about spider light, Maud, is that it hides things–things you never knew existed in the world. But once you have seen those things, you can never afterwards forget them…’

  The spider light room tilted and spun. Maud gasped and tumbled dizzily back into the dark corridor, slamming the door and drawing the bolt back with a hand that shook violently. Then she ran, without looking back, through the passageways until at last–oh merciful God, oh thank you, Jesus!–she saw a door half open, and beyond it Latchkill’s grounds.

  The nightmare of the black iron door went with her as she ran. It’s real, thought Maud, going through the thick shrubbery and the leafless trees, gasping when a low branch caught her cloak and half dragged it off. It exists, that door and that room–they’re both there, at Latchkill’s heart. But how could they be in my dreams all those years ago? Don’t think about it yet, though; just think about getting safely outside.

  The gates were ahead of her at last: they were like black jutting teeth in the darkness. They would be locked and guarded by the lodge keeper, but people must come and go through those gates: delivery carts with provisions, the nurses going on or off duty. In the dim light, with the dark blue Latchkill cloak around her shoulders Maud might pass as one of the nurses. But supposing the lodge keeper knew them all? He would certainly know the times they came and went. Maud thought about this, and then remembered the cheerful voice that had called out about only another hour before going off-duty. St Michael’s church clock was just chiming nine, so it was a reasonably safe guess that the changeover to the night staff would happen at ten. Very well, she would wait until ten. It was quite a cold night, but not icily so, and the ground was perfectly dry. She would trust to luck that her escape would not be discovered in the next hour, and she could slip out with the nurses going off-duty. She wrapped the cloak around her, and sat down in the thickest part of the shrubbery.

  Memories came flooding in, all the way back to that last morning with mamma. The morning that was the tangled bloodied part of memory–the long-ago morning when the spider light had lain thickly over Amberwood.

  It had been her eighth birthday, and Maud had understood by then that mamma lived in her own room, and did not go out. It did not seem odd; it was just what mammas did. She was taken to see her each evening by Mrs Plumtree, after she had had her milk and biscuits, and sometimes mamma said quite ordinary, quite happy things, like, ‘Oh, there’s my dearest girl,’ and, ‘What have you been doing today, my precious one?’ But sometimes she said things Maud did not understand, and that were quite scary. ‘Child of fear,’ she said. ‘That’s what you are, my dear.’ And as Maud’s birthday got nearer, she said, ‘They think I forget the date, but I don’t.’ Maud thought this must mean her birthday, and that mamma was not going to forget it, but later she heard mamma say to papa, ‘It’s the anniversary. One day he should know what he did. He should be made to pay.’ Maud did not know who he was, but in reply, papa only coughed in the nervous way he had when he did not know what to say. But the next morning, he had said to Mrs Plumtree that the mistress was restless again. He dared say it would pass, but in the meantime, perhaps Mrs Plumtree would keep a close watch. Mrs Plumtree had said she would, trust her for that, sir, and was Miss Maud to be taken in as usual?

  ‘Oh yes,’ papa had said, after a moment. ‘I think that’s perfectly safe.’

  And then, early on the very morning of her eighth birthday, mamma had come into Maud’s bedroom, and had said Maud was to be very quiet and to do exactly as she was told, because there was a secret. The secret meant that Maud had to get up at once, get dressed and go with mamma. They had to be mouse-quiet, said mamma, because it was important not to wake papa or Mrs Plumtree.

  It was a bit strange for mamma to be out of her room, but Maud had thought it might be something to do with her birthday–it might be that they were going to see a puppy or a kitten. But wherever they were going, Maud almost had to run to keep up with mamma, and mamma kept looking back over her shoulder as if she was worried about somebody seeing them. Once she stopped and tightened her hold on Maud’s hand, and peered into the hedges on the side of the road. Now that Maud was a bit more awake she saw that mamma looked strange: her hair was not coiled up into a neat bun as usual; it was wispy and straggly, and the buttons of her gown were not properly done up–her chemise showed through. Maud hoped they would not meet anyone, because it would be embarrassing for people to see mamma like this. She tried to ask where they were going, but mamma said, ‘I told you, it’s a secret.’

  Maud had not exactly been frightened, but she was n
o longer used to being with mamma like this–it was a long time since they had taken their afternoon walks together. She started to feel cold and shivery inside, and wondered if mamma would be angry if she let go of her hand and ran back home.

  When they came to Latchkill’s gates, mamma had stopped, and said, ‘That’s where we’re going.’ Maud looked up in astonishment, because it was still spider light time–there had been a huge scuttly spider on the marble washstand in her bedroom yesterday morning–and mamma had always said you must never be caught near to Latchkill at that time. Spider light was when the bad things happened.

  But the spider light did not seem to matter today because mamma was tugging on an iron rope. A bell jangled and a man ran out of the little house at the side of the gates, and said, ‘Good morning madam, and little miss, and what can I do for you?’

  Mamma said in her haughtiest voice, ‘I wish to come inside, if you please’ and the man looked at her for a moment, and then nodded. The gates opened, and they stepped through.

  Latchkill was as frightening as Maud had always known it would be. It had high-up windows with jutting-out bits of stone so they looked like eyes under too thick eyebrows staring down at the people on the ground. It was a dirty-grey colour, and it had a crooked look as if the people who had built it had not measured it properly, so it had ended up twisted. If it had been a person, it would have been a hunchback, or a man limping.

  Mamma seemed to know the way they must go. Holding Maud’s hand very tightly, she led the way around the side of the house. ‘This is the door we’ll use to go inside, Maud.’

  ‘Are we going to see somebody?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, we are. We’re going to see somebody we should have seen a long time ago.’

  Mamma’s eyes were glittery, and although her face was pale, there were two spots of red on her cheeks as if she had painted them on.

  As well as being dark, the inside of Latchkill smelt horrid as if somebody had boiled cabbage for too long, or as if the people who lived here did not wash often enough. Maud hated it, but mamma was striding along a passage, still holding firmly to Maud’s hand. If they met anyone, they must say they had been sent for because a relative was ill. Did Maud understand that?