by John Lutz
There was his father on the floor, one of his arms twisted behind him, his chest all red. Aaron saw white bone, like smooth, polished stone.
He became aware of someone screaming.
He was screaming. It was his own voice he heard!
“You come here to me, Aaron!” His mother. Loud. As if he’d done something wrong and was being called to task.
He shook his head, backing away but staying clear of the closet.
“I know who you are,” she said, and swung the long shotgun so it was aimed square at him. “Don’t you think I don’t know you.”
He ran and slammed into the screen door. Bumped into it again and it flew open. And he was on the plank porch and down the three wood steps and running.
The shotgun roared again and he felt a rush of buckshot pass close over his head like a storm.
Glancing back, he saw his mother aim the shotgun again, then toss it aside. Both shells in the double-barrel gun had been fired. Empty-handed now, she came toward Aaron, her steps clumsy and long, her face still a mask. His mother but not his mother.
“I know who you are!” she screamed again. “The dark devil’s eye! The secret, sinful issue of the other!”
Aaron didn’t take time trying to figure out what she meant. He sprinted hard for the woods.
But she took an angle to cut him off, so he doubled back and ran around to the rear of the house. High grass and brush grabbed at his ankles, trying to slow him down. He’d run like this in his worst dreams, when he’d come awake sweating and trembling. Is this a nightmare?
More woods before him now, then mountainside.
And the old barn that was about to fall but never did and never would.
The barn where he felt safe, where the webs and spiders were, where Aaron spent long afternoons with the spiders, touching them, feeling their webs, wondering at their lives, what they knew and why. His mother worshipped them, it was said at his school. His mother was crazy. There’d been fights, some of them bloody, then nobody said that about his mother anymore in front of Aaron. But he knew they said it when he wasn’t there to fight.
She might not find me if I go in the barn!
Sucking in harsh, painful gasps, he dashed to the tall plank doors that were open about six inches because their rusty hinges were bent. He squeezed inside, feeling splinters sting his bare chest.
He was surrounded by warmth and rays of sunlight that swirled with dust, with ancient straw and the ghosts of animals. And there were the webs, glistening like decoration in the sun that broke through spaces between old boards. The webs were jeweled with dark creatures and white lumps, with writhing and darting movement. And there were warm shadows behind the webs where Aaron might hide.
He ducked beneath one of the large webs his mother said he must never break, then crawled into one of the empty wood stalls. His eyes burned and his breathing was like crying. Around him was the scratchy strawed earth and old smell of animals.
One of the barn doors scraped on bare ground. A hinge screeched and the barn grew brighter. Less safe.
Aaron saw that his mother had opened the door, saw her silhouette black against earth and sky. Behind her, on the long dirt road from the county highway, he saw dust rising.
Car comin’.
Aaron watched his mother step all the way into the barn and turn her head, looking this way and that. She reached into black shadow and her hand came out holding a long-handled ax.
“You needn’t think you gotta hide from me. From your own mother that bore you. I hear you breathin’ fire, Aaron. I hear the flame of your breath!”
Like an animal that had caught a scent and knew which way to go, she suddenly came directly toward him, fast.
At first he was too terrified to move. Then she was there, bigger than he ever saw her, blocking his way. He scrambled backward, still in a sitting position. His bare shoulders struck hard board and he couldn’t move back away from her any farther.
His mother raised the ax.
Then brought it down.
The pain in Aaron’s right foot made him scream so loud his mother backed away a step. He rose and limped past her, his cheek rubbing the softness of her sweating breast beneath her housedress. He smelled her as he squeezed past, and it didn’t smell like her.
Whimpering and trailing blood, he ran toward the open barn door. But he couldn’t move fast enough. Outside the door in the bright day he saw cars stopping. A sheriff ‘s car with flashing red and blue lights. Long-legged Sheriff Lester in his brown uniform climbing out, reaching back in the car for his big riot gun, like the shotgun Aaron’s mother had used on his father.
The pain in Aaron’s foot made him slow and sit down on the barn’s hard dirt floor. He looked at his poor right foot, the parting of his big toe from the others and the blood and bone of it. His stomach tightened and he felt sick.
His mother was over him again, almost straddling him. Gripping the ax with both hands near the end of the long handle.
“What?” she was screaming. “What?”
Aaron realized he’d asked her something and tried to snatch what it was from his spinning thoughts.
“Why?” someone with his voice asked. “Why? Why do you wanna hurt me?”
“That’s a fair question, Mrs. Mandle,” said the sheriff ‘s level voice behind her.
Aaron’s mother didn’t so much as glance back at Sheriff Lester. She was staring at Aaron in a way he’d never seen, her wide eyes picking up the light but the rest of her almost black against the sunlight and glittering webs behind her. Like an opening into another world.
“How can you believe in God,” his mother asked, “without believin’ in Satan?”
She raised the ax high, high over Aaron.
And the sheriff ‘s riot gun made thunder and blew away half her head.
“What I am,” said the SSF drill instructor ten years later in the searing Louisiana sun, “is your worst nightmare and the devil you know.”
More years later he’d remember how SSF recruit Aaron Mandle, standing rigidly in full battle gear and camouflage paint, had returned his hard stare with one of his own that sent a chill scurrying up the spine.
27
New York, 2003
Cindy Vine thought she might be going crazy. She managed the household budget, and the money was tight. Joe’s hours had been cut back, and she’d tried to get some kind of job but couldn’t. What office skills she possessed were hopelessly out of date. Computers scared the hell out of her. And nobody gave a damn if she knew how to file and could type fast. They might never have seen a keyboard attached to a typewriter.
Now this!
The hospital had made a settlement offer. Three hundred thousand dollars! Plus medical expenses for Alan.
And Joe told the lawyers no.
The apartment had never seemed so small, the furniture so threadbare, the kitchen so dated, the carpet so worn.
“Why, Joe? For God’s sake, why?”
He simply stood there in the living room looking at her, wearing the angry but faintly amused expression she was beginning to hate. You could never understand, the look said. You have no choice but to leave it to me. You have to trust my judgment. You have no choice. You have no choice.
“Joe?”
“Because it isn’t enough, Cindy. They owe us more. And I want an admission of guilt. No amount of money’s enough without that. I want them to say they were wrong, that they turned Alan into—That they did that to Alan!”
“Their position’s that they won’t admit wrongdoing even if they make a settlement offer. That’s what we were told.”
“They can change their position.”
She was struggling but staying outwardly calm. During the last six months they’d fought enough about this kind of thing. What good was any of it if it was killing you measure by measure, word by word? How did it help Alan or anyone else? And while it was all being hashed out, the bills continued to pile up. “What did our attorneys say when you to
ld them we were refusing the offer?”
“They said it’s what they would’ve advised.”
“They?”
“Larry Sigfried. The other partners. They discussed it and that was their conclusion.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed him. The room seemed even smaller and warmer. Cindy was light-headed from the heat. She had to sit down. She took three unsteady backward steps to the couch and sat slumped in it, pressing a palm to her forehead.
“Hey, Cindy. You okay, babe?”
She couldn’t look up at him. Am I okay? A three-hundred-thousand-dollar settlement offer. No, thanks. No need to check with the wife. Does he know how much that is?
Now she met his eyes, his expression mingling concern and truculence. “We already turned down half that much money, Joe. Don’t you think there’s going to come a time when the hospital, through their attorneys, is going to say that’s it, that’s our limit, Mr. and Mrs. Vine? We doubled our offer and you foolishly refused. So we’ll see you in court.”
“No. And lawyers don’t talk that way except in movies or television cop shows. I think negotiations are just beginning. And that’s how our attorneys see it.”
She’d noticed that to Joe the hospital attorneys were lawyers, and the law firm representing the Vine family was peopled by attorneys and partners. “I’m their client, too. Don’t they understand that?”
“Cindy, you know how it is. What we told them. If they speak to either one of us, it’s like they’ve spoken to us both.”
“Then how would you feel if I turned down all that money without consulting you?”
“I’d understand.”
“Would you understand if I demanded to be consulted in the future? Would you agree with that?”
“No.” His face was flushed. He was getting angrier. “I don’t want any of your goddamn word games, Cindy. Turning down a second settlement offer was the right thing to do, whatever you believe. You don’t understand about this kinda thing. Cases like ours are usually settled out of court, but they sometimes drag on for years.”
“Years? What are we going to eat in the meantime? And what’s your plan for paying the bills?”
“We’re making it okay.”
“Says the man who doesn’t write the checks.”
“That’s right! Says the man!”
“Since you’re in charge, Joe, tell me where the money’s going to come from. You’re down to temporary hours at work, and I’ve tried and can’t get a job. Probably couldn’t work one if I did, what’s happened’s got my brains so scrambled. The checking account’s overdrawn again. So tell me, where the fuck will we get the money to buy next week’s groceries?”
“We can max out the Visa card.”
“We did that.”
“The other Visa card, the one that came in the mail last week.”
He doesn’t understand. . . He doesn’t get it.. . Cindy bowed her head and cupped her face in her hands, trying not to sob in frustration. “We owe thousands, Joe.”
“And we’re angling for millions.”
She looked up at him. “Do you actually believe that?”
“Other people in our position have gotten that much.”
“But it isn’t just the money with you, is it?”
Flushed again. Furious. He wrestled out of the rain-spotted jacket he’d put on this morning and hurled it, wadded, into a chair. Righteous rage. He’d gotten good at it. “Fucking right it isn’t just the money! It’s justice! For Alan! Have you forgotten about Alan?”
“That isn’t fair, Joe.”
“Maybe it isn’t. But Alan deserves a lot better than he got. I don’t know if it’s possible, but when this is over I want to think he at least got justice.”
“It’s too late for him to have justice, Joe. No amount of money will ever even the scales.”
“I can’t believe that. I have to think some kind of justice is possible. It’s the only way I can keep on living.”
Vengeance. For Joe. Cindy bowed her head again and said nothing.
There was nothing more to say. He wouldn’t listen to reason. And she wasn’t even sure if it really was reason. Millions of dollars. If Alan lived—and he must live—think of the things they could do for him with all that money. She had to admit it made sense to give up hundreds of thousands for future millions. Her thinking had been addled lately, so maybe Joe was right.
“I’m going to visit Alan. Are you coming?” His voice was calm. Gentle. Surprising her.
Cindy sighed. She swallowed the years, the pain, and the compromise that was really simply giving in, giving up.
She nodded and stood up from the sofa. Her body ached and her shoulders slumped. The tragedy of what happened to Alan, then the conflict with the hospital, seemed to make Joe more determined and stronger. But it was wearing her down. Aging her prematurely. She felt so weak, as if something more than bone or tissue was broken inside her. She didn’t want to fight. Not anymore.
“It’s still drizzling outside, but it’s warm,” he told her.
“I’ll get an umbrella,” she said. “And one for you.”
* * *
The rain made it easier. The Night Spider stood in the spacious underground garage of the Arcade Building, where the broadcasting studios of Nina Count’s Eye Spy news show were located. No one was there to see him. But if they had been, they wouldn’t have taken special notice, with the weather the way it was. It wasn’t unusual for someone to be wearing a light raincoat with the collar turned up. A baseball cap pulled low like a pitcher’s who wanted to conceal his eyes from the hitter.
It was his face the Night Spider wanted to conceal. There were dozens, hundreds of pockmarks where skin had sloughed off from the spider bites. It had taken a while for him to become immune to the bites, before he no longer felt ill from the venom used to paralyze helpless prey.
Then he’d no longer minded the bites, or the spiders themselves. You became what you got used to, and, so, were immune. The captive came to imitate his captor and then, when the opportunity arose, became his captor, or the captor of a suitable substitute. Concentration camps had made that clear; the imitators who became trusties and camp guards were crueler than the real captors. Crueler or wiser. The Night Spider had read much about concentration camps. They were, in fact, his favorite reading.
He’d even gotten used to what the spiders had done to his face and body, how they’d made him pitted and grotesque. Pitted and pitied. People thought spiders were grotesque. They didn’t understand because they’d never looked closely enough. The small and the crawl. . . You had to kneel down, lie down, get very close to see them in the dark.
Not many people could get close enough to understand, and if he tried to explain it to them, that only made things worse. The only girl he’d tried to date in high school had spurned and denigrated him, humiliated him. Her words had stayed with him like burns. Especially one word: Hideous! For weeks after she’d walked away from him, he could hardly bear to look at his own features in the mirror, the pockmarks, the dark eyes full of pain.
Then the pain had changed. There was something else in his eyes.
He met the girl by coincidence in the parking lot of a roadside bar two years after graduation, and he’d taught her what had changed. Followed her home after their so-called friendly conversation, waited for the night to come, then taught her what had changed.
He stepped back into shadow as the sound of a car engine echoed in the garage. Tires swished on concrete, headlight beams danced in the dimness, and the large white Ford SUV that he knew was Nina Count’s leaned as it turned a corner too fast.
It pulled into a parking space, and almost immediately Nina and a man got out. Without a backward glance, Nina worked her key fob and the SUV’s horn gave an abbreviated eep! as the doors locked.
The Night Spider stood still and watched as they walked toward the elevator to the lobby. He could tell by the looseness of their strides that they were relaxed and unsuspecting, even
confident. The man, short and with a face like a rodent’s; Nina, taller than the man and with her long, nyloned legs glimmering in the dim light. She was even taller than she appeared on TV. Wearing some kind of green cape to protect from the rain. It flowed from around her shoulders to a few inches below her slender waist, almost like graceful, folded wings.
The elevator door glided open and she and the rodent man stepped inside. The man glanced around as the door closed, but the Night Spider knew how shadow and light worked, knew everything about the darkness, and knew he hadn’t been seen.
He made a mental note of the black number painted on the concrete wall in front of the white SUV No doubt Nina Count’s personal parking space.
That was the information he’d come for. That and whatever else he might learn. Like the presence of the man with Nina. It would be useful to know who he was and what their relationship was. This was the beginning of the stalk, the first tendrils of the web, the growing knowledge and design of its architecture and of how to spin the rest of it. The first excitement.
He unconsciously reached down and stroked himself. For a moment he considered going to the SUV and leaving some kind of message for her. Not a note. But maybe he could break a taillight or bend out a windshield wiper arm and make it useless. Bend both wiper blades so they stuck out like helpless, feeling antennae.
But it wouldn’t be wise to alert her. Not yet. When the time came he might frighten this one with a subtle opening feint, make her pay in dread for what she’d said about him. Then she wouldn’t see him again. Not until she was securely snagged by his cunning and it was too late for her. Not until she knew it was too late.
Then hunter and prey would become captor and captive.
Her last, endless hours . . .
His soft-soled shoes made no sound as he left the garage, skirting a wall and avoiding the light as long as possible.
Marla said, “Think it’ll ever stop raining?”
She’d brought Horn the club sandwich he’d ordered. He noticed she hadn’t asked about his dropping into the Home Away for lunch, though before he’d had only breakfast there. He figured she hadn’t asked because she already knew the answer.