But two days later, Tristram Boye was pulled dead from under a woodpile two suburbs away, his little throat cut wide to the world.
Katharine put down her trowel. Maybe it was time to admit not that she’d won, but that she’d lost. She should sell this empty house. Listen to her daughter and buy an apartment near her.
A flicker of white jigged in the corner of her eye.
She turned, wincing at the tight pain in her punished neck and shoulders. A small white terrier trotted along the path at the side of the house.
“Shoo! Go home, you naughty…”
The words died in her mouth as the dog stopped at her voice. It turned and regarded her with black pebble eyes.
Katharine had grown up on a farm and animals had been an everyday part of her childhood, but only once before had she seen a creature regard her with this cold contempt. It had been spring, and a nesting magpie had begun swooping on anyone who neared her tree beside the utility shed. It was the weekend, and Katharine had been helping her father make a new chicken house. He was working on the chicken roof and asked young Katharine to go to the toolshed and fetch the snips. She had stridden to the shed, and in her last few steps heard the dry swoop of wings on air. She put up her hands just as a flash of black-and-white feathers rocketed past her, blowing her fine hair around her ears. Fired by her suddenly tripping heart, she sprinted through the open door into the black, cavelike shed. Deep in the cool dark, she turned. Through the doorway she watched the bird land in the square of squintingly bright sunlight. The magpie hopped to the edge of the doorframe, and stopped, peering into the darkness of the shed. Its eyes were black as stones, shiny and cold. They found her. The bird watched her, calculating whether or not to attack. And young Katharine knew that if it did, it would attack without reservation, biting and spearing with every cell in its body focused on the task of hurting her. The bird held her captive in the shed until her father found her an hour later, tears rolling down her cheeks.
The little white dog watched Katharine now with the same look of icy appraisal, its round coal eyes scrutinizing her, deciding whether or not to attack.
Katharine’s skin felt frozen hard. She was terrified by a small dog that stared at her in a way no dog ever had. Then she saw: its ribcage hadn’t moved. It wasn’t breathing.
The creature turned and eased up the stairs to the back door. Katharine watched it rise with eerie fluidity to its hind legs, turn one paw, hook and swing open the screen door, and slip inside the house.
“Laine!”
She climbed to her feet, ignoring the jagged pains in her hips and back, and ran.
Chapter 34
T he Wynard was wretched. The boat lay on her side like the mummified body of a long-dead elephant, her gray hull beginning to cave and collapse as moisture and unseen insects completed their rotting work; her timbers were faded and bleached like cow bones. Far overhead, wind roared like fire in the treetops, an invisible wave endlessly crashing.
Nicholas shifted the shotgun to one hand and checked his watch. It was nearly four. The winter sun remained hidden by a million leaves, but he could feel its distant warmth vanishing from the day with greedy speed. The air here in the deep green shadows was frigid and still. Hannah shivered beside him.
“Which way?” she asked.
He looked around the hunching curtains of green and black. At the boat, the track had petered out.
“I don’t remember.”
The last time he’d left here, he’d been carried unconscious on eight thousand spindle legs, Garnock riding on his chest like a stygian cavalier.
The ground ahead, thick with vine and root and trunk, seemed to rise. The air that way had a slightly sour tang. Nicholas reasoned that the river couldn’t be far away, its salty mud banks thick with mangroves and rancid with the droppings of flying foxes. He nodded in that direction, and he and Hannah started again uphill.
As they crawled between the ancient trees, picking their way through the dense shadows over mossy flood-felled trunks and under incestuous, noose-like vines, Nicholas told her everything else he knew about Quill. When he’d finished, Hannah was silent for a thoughtful moment.
“Wow. That’s a long time to be alive,” she said. “Rowena must be very lonely.”
Nicholas looked at her.
“Maybe that’s why she’s so mean,” she continued. “Because she’s sad. Everyone she loved is dead and left behind.”
Nicholas stopped. The trees around them now were more shadow than substance. Even Hannah’s face was a gray mask, as featureless as the sandy bottom of a deep pond.
“I think we have to turn back.”
Hannah blinked. “We can’t. If we don’t get her today…” Her voice trailed off with a shudder.
Nicholas nodded.
“Hannah?” A voice as thin as smoke wended from the dark belt of trees up ahead. Nicholas watched Hannah’s eyes widen and her face tighten like a fist. His own heart began to gallop.
“Haaaannahhh?” A girl’s voice. A pained voice.
Hannah’s eyes darted between the woods and Nicholas.
“It’s Miriam,” she whispered.
Nicholas saw goosebumps on his arm. He shook his head. “It’s not.”
“It is! She’s not dead! They were wrong!”
She started forward. Nicholas snatched her arm and wheeled her round. He grabbed her chin and made her focus her wild eyes on him.
“It’s not your sister, Hannah. Think about it.”
Hannah blinked. She nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Stay here.”
He looked around to orient himself, then cocked the shotgun and stepped into the deeper gloom.
“Haaannnahhh? Help me, Hannaaaahhh!”
The voice was a keening tapestry of pain and sorrow. It made Nicholas’s skin crawl. What was it doing to Hannah?
He moved as quickly as he could, but the trees were wide and old and huddled tight as conspirators. The spaces between them were filled with even older stumps that rose from the rustling ground like the broken teeth of titans. It was growing so dark. Nicholas suddenly realized what a stupid thing he’d done. He’d left Hannah alone.
“Hannah?” The voice was no longer scared. A shadow shifted between the gloomy trees ahead of Nicholas.
“Miriam?” he asked, carefully swinging the gun barrel up toward the movement.
“Hannah!” replied the voice delightedly. And suddenly the shadow jolted forward.
It was a spider at least the size of Garnock, a widow with gloss black and hairless legs, each as long and thick as a broom handle. They moved a shelled body as big as a water-filled black balloon. Yet the spider jumped from tree to tree with amazing speed; one moment swaying like a ready boxer, the next leaping and landing with eerie silence, so fast that Nicholas barely had time to thumb the hammer back.
“Hhhaaaaaa!”
The voice changed from human to something utterly alien as the spider pounced. Nicholas pulled the trigger. The blast was loud but was squashed instantly by the disapproving trees. The spider jerked, but its momentum carried it right at him-he scrambled sideways and the spider hit the tree behind him with the wet crack of a giant egg smashing. It slid lifeless to the dark leaves, its long finger-bone legs quivering in death palsies.
Nicholas turned and ran.
“Hannah!”
He sprinted downhill, dodging between trunks and jumping over spiny branches, sliding and falling and rising and running. Ahead, he heard Hannah scream in terror.
“Hold on, Hannah!”
He thumbed back the shotgun’s other hammer and jumped over the last log into the clearing.
Hannah stood shaking, eyes locked on something hidden from Nicholas’s sight by a wide trunk.
“What is it?” he asked.
She pointed, and he stepped closer to see what she faced.
He felt his own legs turn light as dust.
If the last spider had been big, this one was huge. Its body was the size
of a sheepdog, squat and dense, bristling with sandy brown hairs. It was reared up on six legs; its front two pawed the air, tasting it. A cluster of red eyes stared out from a nest of ugly gray hair. Its fangs shuffled noiselessly.
“Kill it, Nicholas.”
He raised the gun, and squeezed the trigger.
And as he did, he noticed the straps tucked in the folds where the spider’s tubelike legs met its thorax. Hannah’s knapsack! As the hammer fell, he jerked the gun aside. The blast shook a sudden hole in the bush beside the spider, which jerked in silent pain. As it moved, its horrible appearance melted away, becoming Hannah on her knees, her hands tied behind her back, and a tiny red circle of a single shotgun pellet hole in her calf. Her mouth was gagged with rags.
Nicholas whirled, nauseated that he’d been so stupid.
The other Hannah stood behind him, grinning. She stepped forward lightly and Nicholas felt a sting in his arm. He dropped the gun and blinked. The smiling Hannah held a syringe in her hand and, as she stepped back, her limbs lengthened and her hair grew. Rowena Quill, young and blond and beautiful, stood in front of him, smiling as only one truly pleased with herself can.
“Hello, my pretty man.”
Chapter 35
T hrough the folds and curtains of sleep, Laine heard the dry squeal of a hinge. Her eyes drifted open. The bedroom door was silently swinging open. And into the room stepped one long, bristled leg, placing its hooked foot stealthily on the floor. Then another followed it, moving with completely inhuman fluidity. The legs belonged to a squat, solid spider as large as a fox.
Laine’s heart began hammering, gulping fistfuls of blood; she felt her exhaling breath flute down to a whisper as her throat tightened with terror.
At the sound of her gasp, the spider hunched and adjusted itself with unbelievable speed to face her. Two large, black, hemispherical eyes were orbited by six smaller ones, all sitting on a gray-haired bump of a head that would feel, Laine knew, as hard and alien as a bristled watermelon. Between the spider’s two front legs was a pair of fangs, sharply pointed and hard as polished ebony. The fangs curled in, wet themselves on the glands tucked under its crablike mouth, then extended again, glistening wet with poison.
She was on the cliff edge of total panic, wanting to shriek and keep screaming, but no sound came out of her dry mouth. Her jaw spasmed.
But her left hand was farthest from the spider, and she sent it shaking out from under the bedsheets, hunting for a weapon.
The spider, low to the ground, took an incredibly slow, very careful step forward. It raised itself slightly on its legs and Laine heard a faint hiss as it drew in air. The spider let out a whisper that set the hairs on the back of her neck hard.
“Aaiiide.”
Oh God, she thought madly. It’s trying to say my name.
Her sneaking fingers found the alarm clock. Useless-she could grab it but every chance was that the cord plugged into the wall would stop her swinging it. She kept hunting for the other object she knew was there.
The spider steadied itself on its feet, tensing its legs and reminding Laine deliriously of how a golfer wiggled his feet and hips, positioning himself for a clean swing. Again, she heard air drawn in and released in a controlled hiss: “Maaaie maaaiee.”
She understood the bastardized words: Bye bye.
Her fingers finally touched what she wanted: the smooth, round steel of a spray can. But as she grabbed, her sweaty fingers slipped and the can clattered across the floor and rolled impotently into the corner.
Laine’s eyes widened.
Garnock’s mandibles parted. A smile. Then it leapt.
But the spider only moved a fraction before it was slammed back down to the floor with a hard ring of steel on wood. Two tines of a pitchfork had speared through its bony shell and pinned it to the pine floorboards.
Katharine turned and spat.
The impaled creature let out a horrible hissing wail, and its horned feet scrabbled against the floor, gouging the polish. Its fangs pistoned up and down like thresher blades. It was pulling the fork out of the floor.
Katharine stepped carefully behind the skewered spider and leaned more weight on the pitchfork handle. Her stomach convulsed and she strained to keep from gagging.
“It was a dog. It looked like a dog when I stabbed it…”
Laine padded quickly across the floor and scooped up the can of insecticide. She glanced over to Garnock.
It was wheezing and straining against the tines. The hairy armor of its exoskeleton was starting to tear and a puddle of blue hemolymph spread beneath it.
“I think it’s going to pull itself free,” said Katharine quickly.
It was true. Though it would kill itself doing it, Garnock was aiming to pull its flesh right through the pinning tines. Laine popped the lid off the spray can. She stood in front of the giant spider and watched its fangs swoon up and down.
“Bye bye, indeed,” she whispered, and sprayed insecticide right into the nest of its eyes.
The spider let out a piercing whistle that bubbled in the blue liquid leaking from below it. Its legs pounded a sloshing tattoo on the boards. Laine kept the spray going, saturating the spider’s head, covering the creature in a pungent chemical fog.
“Come on,” she whispered, grabbing Katharine’s arm as she slipped past Garnock. It twisted on its impalement and Laine saw its fangs stab the air as she passed. The women hurried down the hall.
“We should leave that for a while,” suggested Laine.
“Yes,” agreed Katharine. “I’ll boil the kettle.”
T hey were in the kitchen, Laine helping Katharine make tea. Outside, daylight was fading from the sky.
“When did Nicholas say he’d be back?” asked Laine as lightly as she could.
Katharine frowned and checked the wall clock.
“He didn’t.”
The telephone rang. Katharine and Laine glanced at one another. Katharine picked up the phone.
“Hello?” she said. As she listened, her eyes stayed on Laine. “When?” She nodded. “Is anyone there going to…? Okay. Thank you.” She cradled the receiver. “Reverend Pritam Anand died today. Heart failure.”
Laine set down the crockery as a shiver of understanding went through her. Pritam was dead. Garnock had come for her.
Quill would be after Nicholas.
He must know that.
“The fool,” she whispered. “He’s in the woods.”
Chapter 36
S mall, shifting gems of darkening blue winked through the high, wind-harried leaves. Evening’s fast fingers were drawing velvet across the sky.
Nicholas came awake, slowly and painfully, as if being thawed from a block of black and acidulous ice. At first, he thought he was on fire, and the flickering yellow lights at the corners of his eyes were his limbs aflame. But as he worked blood into his fingers and limbs, he realized the pain was just the agony of pins and needles.
A faint whistling. An old tune, bittersweet, mournful and thin, was barely audible above the wind troubling the eaves.
Nicholas lay on the floor. He could just see out a clear window: trees almost black with approaching night masked all but the tiniest glimpses of bruised evening sky. Everything shifted, in and out of sharpness. His stomach felt ready to let go its contents, and he swallowed back salty bile. He tried to sit, but sharp pain in his wrists and ankles stopped him. He was well tied with ropes.
He rolled a few degrees, wincing at the bright potsherds of pain in the bigger muscles of his legs and arms.
Quill sat on an old oak rocking chair before a small iron stove, staring at the flames flickering behind the black-toothed grin of the stove door, whistling through her gray prune lips. As the firelight shimmered, so did her appearance. One moment her skin was ancient and sagging, pale and deeply scored as drought-cracked earth, but when the flames rose and shadows played across her, Nicholas saw the clear skin and gold hair of young Rowena Quill. Young, ancient; haggard, beautiful. Dark br
own eyes, now black, now brown, reflecting red, locked on the flames. Quill’s tune was soft and came from far away and long ago. She seemed to feel Nicholas’s eyes on her and her whistle fell to a sigh.
“Awake?” she asked.
Nicholas rolled a little more. He lay on clean wooden floorboards that smelled of pine oil. The room was a cozy mouthful of shadows: it was paneled in dark wood, but neat. A small cedar table stood on a rug with a single chair keeping company. A curtain to a toileting room was held back by an embroidered sash. A tall pine dresser as thin and stately as a butler held some painted dishes and glazed figurines. Another curtain, this one of lace that reminded him too much of spiderweb, hid all but the shyest glimpse of a trimly made brass bed with a floral counterpane. At the far end of the room he lay in, the floorboards were cut away in a circle. The ring was lined with neatly mortared stones: a fire pit in which coals glowed dully. On the far side of the pit, a folded blanket, kneaded and pressed by the weight of a pet-Garnock, he guessed-but there was no sign of the monster.
“Where is Hannah?” he asked.
Quill rocked. “Hush.”
Again, Nicholas had a vertiginous feeling of seeing her through idling water or of a hologram viewed in passing: her features swam in the fickle firelight, vacillating between old and young, hideous and beauteous. Only her expression remained fixed and cold. Behind her, through the window, the last of the day’s color bled from the sky.
He flexed an arm. The rope bit into his wrist.
“You can’t-”
“I said, hush!” she commanded, and her voice seemed to rouse the flames behind the stove grate. The room danced. She half-rose from her chair, and the young Rowena Quill, pale and blond and terrifyingly beautiful, leaned forward, rage sparkling in her dark eyes. Then she caught and reeled in her anger and sat back down, her skin rippled again into leathery furrows. She folded her hands together, watching him.
The Dead Path Page 31