A Spider Sat Beside Her

by K E Lanning

  Crawling over her mother’s back, she balanced on the log for a second and then leapt into the tree. The rain buffeted her as she clambered up into the rough branches of the oak, climbing up until she felt a solid branch high in the tree. She clutched the wet limbs, looking down into the darkness for her mother. “Mommy, come on!”

  Lightning flashed, and Lowry saw her mother kneeling on the log, stretching her arms toward the oak tree. But before she could leap, a fresh pulse of water hit the end of the log, twisting it away from the oak, and plunged it back into the surging river. Screaming, her mother flipped off the log, and then there was only the sound of the raging waters.

  Lowry screamed into the darkness, “Mommy!”

  She listened to the roar of the river, trembling at the sound of splintering wood surrounding her. Another round of lightning flashed over the churning river, revealing broken trees rolling in the foam . . . but nothing else.

  Drenched, Lowry shivered, tears mixing with the rain on her face. “Mommy?”

  ***

  Two days later, a couple walking their dog along the river discovered her mother’s body jammed against one of the cement pilings of a washed-out bridge. A news photo showed her pale body wrapped in a shroud of sticks and plastic grocery bags.

  With no other family members nearby, Lowry was deemed old enough to identify the body. She arrived at the morgue, gagging as she passed a stairwell with the nauseating smell of formaldehyde wafting from the floor below. A kind police officer escorted Lowry into her office, gently keeping her hand on Lowry’s shoulder. “Lowry, this will only take a minute. I’m going to show you some photos. Just tell me if you know this woman or not.”

  The officer pulled out a set of photographs and placed them side by side on the table in front of Lowry. Taken from the front and profile, stark images of her mother’s deathly white face lay in front of her. Blinking in disbelief, she nodded and reached out to touch the face of the woman who had given her life and then saved her from death. She dropped her head into her hands and began to sob. Her mother was gone.

  ***

  During the funeral, Lowry felt like a china doll—one break in her façade and she would fall to pieces. Duff had returned from Antarctica for the funeral, and even though she sat in the pew of the funeral home with her maternal grandparents on one side and her father on the other, Lowry could feel the distance between them. Lowry stared ahead as the choir sang hymns, but all she heard were the last words her mother had said to her: Climb as high as you can.

  The service ended, and her grandmother turned to her, tears flowing down her cheeks. “Lowry, I want you to know what your mother once told us.” She squeezed Lowry’s hand. “You were her sunrise and her sunset.”

  Lowry stood in the receiving line with a vacant smile on her face, her grandmother holding her hand as friends and family greeted her with compassion, but she also felt a thread of pity in their glances. Her insides were balled up with the uncertainty of her future.

  When the funeral ended, Duff put his arm around Lowry and brusquely told her grandparents, “Lowry will be coming to live with me. I have everything arranged.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Nick sat on a folding chair in the yard with the ice tinkling in the glass as he twirled his scotch. He sipped the smooth whiskey, letting it linger in his mouth for a second before he swallowed. The warmth of the liquor spread down his shoulders, and he relaxed into the chair, gazing at the dazzling southern constellations from the best seat in the house.

  A pinpoint of light caught his eye zipping across the heavens—the ISS on her polar orbit. Lowry should be arriving back at the space station any time now. He followed the resolute light across the arc of the heavens until the ISS disappeared over the horizon. He blew a kiss at the empty sky.

  “Come home safe, Lowry-girl.”

  He exhaled, shaking his head. Now that the trial had ended, Nick hoped the intrigue with the space-station shutdown was over. The investigators had left Antarctica, but not before scrubbing any evidence on the Colombians they found, even penetrating his cloud account and the professor’s to ferret out and wipe all of the photos he had taken. Without enough proof to bring any Colombians to trial, there was no hope of overturning the Inuit’s conviction through legal avenues.

  Since Jean-Luc’s verdict, news reports obligingly slanted the story of the trial the way the Ameradan government wanted, thereby crucifying the entire tribe on a digital cross.

  Nick shook his head, thinking of his conversation earlier in the day with Duff, who still had contacts at the DOJ. The news hadn’t been released to the public, but a junior attorney on the prosecution team had perished that morning in a bizarre car accident. Had Lowry met Edward Douglas during the proceedings?

  With his index finger, Nick stirred the ice around in his glass, and then stuck his finger in his mouth, sucking the whiskey off his skin.

  Duff had come out smelling like a rose for his role in supporting the prosecution. Rumor was that his war chest for his next election was overflowing, that even his gambling debts were settled. Perverted justice at its finest . . . .

  His brother wasn’t all bad, but the violence of their childhood had dented him, and parts of his psyche had never recovered. And alcohol had drowned any chance for Duff to rise above his past. Addictive to the core, he was a man-child whose weaknesses made him vulnerable to the vices around him—vices that spiders like Halder delighted in exploiting. The Duffs of the world were just a means to an end.

  The momentary happiness of the whiskey left him as memories of the past flooded into his mind.

  He closed his eyes, clenching the arm of the chair. No stories of pats on the back for two boys growing up in Scotland. More likely punches in the face from a father who turned violent when he was drunk—and most nights, he was drunk. As the oldest, Duff was his primary target, though Nick had felt the blows at times. Nick knew his mother had protected him more, perhaps because he was younger. Or maybe she had deemed Duff the sacrificial lamb and tried to protect at least one child.

  But violence sprays shrapnel farther than its intended victim. They had all been branded by the brutality, just as their father had been branded by his father. Their mother was too terrified to leave him, though Nick knew she had considered it. Then a miracle saved them. Their father died in a fiery, drunken car crash, but the psychological damage had already occurred.

  When violence is woven into the fabric of life, particularly around an impressionable child, those strands of abuse become deeply imbedded and the pattern familiar; the tears never completely heal. Who holds the blame? The only remedy is to break the pattern—to be the mother or father who examines the past, understands the cause, and is determined to not repeat the cycle.

  Nick zipped up his jacket as the cool night air nestled around him. He sank back into the chair, his head buzzing as he stared up into the brilliant night sky.

  From a dim corner of Nick’s mind, a line from an old poem emerged: From birth, we humans gather wounds . . . and are forever scarred.

  Finishing his whiskey, Nick stared into the glass, rolling the remnants of liquid around the bottom of the tumbler. Liquor had been the escape from the pain of living for his father, and then his brother, but he had been spared the curse of alcoholism. He rarely indulged, but he was thoroughly human, and other vices had haunted him over his life: envy, sorrow, and deceit, to name a few.

  Like a child with a spyglass, Nick brought the bottom of the glass to his eye and gazed upward, turning it like a kaleidoscope with the stars swirling against the black sky through the crystalline base. A sad smile flitted across his face. His savior in life had come in the form of a grieving twelve-year-old girl who had just lost her mother in a tragic flash flood.

  ***

  Nick waited on the dock. A damp, frigid wind sliced into his face, and he pulled up the hood of his coat. A horn blasted, and he turned to the bay, shielding his eyes from the sun as the ship bearing his brother and niece eased into
the dock.

  Nick turned back to gaze at the ramshackle port town of huts and warehouses looking like they’d fallen out of the sky and landed haphazardly on the ground. It was not much different than when he’d arrived on his first voyage to Antarctica. That day had been gray and overcast. He was fresh off the turnip truck, a young man just out of college. He chuckled, remembering the first words spoken to him as he debarked from the ship.

  “Move on, buster,” one of the crew members had yelled, maneuvering a hover pallet down the ramp. Nice start to the adventure of a lifetime . . . .

  The ship maneuvered into the dock, and he turned to scan the deck of the ship for his niece, Lowry. He shook his head. Poor kid had just lost her mother, and her father was bringing her to a mining camp in the middle of nowhere. The crew readied the ship for debarking, and Nick caught sight of her on the deck, face pale, grasping the rail as she gazed out at the desolate town.

  “Lowry!” He waved to her, smiling.

  Lowry broke into a fragile smile and waved back. “Uncle Nicky!”

  Duff appeared by her side and waved, then he trundled a cart overloaded with Lowry’s bags down the ramp. She ran past him and leapt into Nick’s open arms at the end of the ramp.

  Nick held her close as they stood together on the dock, and he whispered softly, “I’m so sorry about your mom.” He placed his hand on her head. “I wish I could have come to her funeral.”

  Shivering, Lowry buried her face under his chin. In a brittle voice, she whispered, “I miss her.”

  “I know, sweetie.” He stroked her hair, and she peered up at him, her lips quivering. He smoothed away the tear escaping down her cheek. “She loved you very much.”

  Lowry laid her head on his shoulder, and Nick felt her tremble, and then she burst into tears. As she clutched him, spasms of grief wracked her as the floodgates of her sorrow opened. Tears poured down her face as she sobbed uncontrollably. Holding her close, he could feel the moisture of her tears soaking through his shirt. Nick rocked her back and forth, biting his lip, struggling to keep himself from breaking down.

  “You’re okay,” he whispered.

  Lowry was calming as Duff reached them with the cart, despair written on his bleak face. But as he stopped beside them, he squinted at Nick with a peculiar darkness.

  Lowry glanced at Duff but then turned back and dropped her head onto Nick’s chest with a heavy sigh. Nick sensed a distance between Lowry and Duff. He’d never excelled at marriage, nor parenting, but Nick hoped that Duff had gained some maturity and would rise to the occasion.

  Duff dropped the bags on the dock and pushed the empty cart to the side. A gash of a smile momentarily appeared, but hostility flashed in his eyes. “A little help, brother.”

  Nick studied him quizzically. Is he dealing with grief . . . or could he actually be jealous? Nick loosened an arm from around Lowry and dug a tissue from his pocket. He handed it to her, and she blew her nose. Exhaling, she gazed up at him, swaying with exhaustion, but a shadow of a smile flickered on her face.

  Nick patted her shoulder and then picked up a couple of the bags. He turned to Duff. “I found a wonderful house just outside of town.” He put his arm around Lowry’s shoulder with a smile. “And Lowry, it has a barn and horses.”

  Lowry’s puffy eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. Color came back into her cheeks, and she broke into a smile. “Horses?”

  Duff’s eyebrow twitched as he stared at Nick. “Horses?”

  Nick gestured to Lowry. “Let’s keep going. The crew will be unloading shipments right behind us.” Lowry turned and walked across the dock in front of them.

  Nick shot a sideways glance at Duff. “I’ll fund the horses,” he said under his breath.

  “Damn right.” Duff’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just buttering her up.”

  Out of the side of his mouth, Nick whispered, “Lowry just lost her mother, and she doesn’t know anyone here. She needs companionship, Duff, and not just two grouchy men.”

  They loaded the bags onto the hovercar and then moved past the piles of ore, warehouses filled with mining machinery, and scattered houses. They passed a small, cement-block school, and Nick pointed to it.

  “There’s your new school, Lowry.”

  She blinked and nodded her head, studying the bare exterior.

  Duff smiled at her. “It may not look like much, but it’s a good school, Lowry. I want the best for my little girl.” He shrugged. “Of course, we may have to add in a few online classes.”

  They continued down a gravel road to a farm on the edge of town. The small farmhouse was set into the lee side of a hill, surrounded by several acres of pasture and a few scrub trees.

  They got out of the hover, and Lowry gaped at the sight of horses grazing in the pasture. An old man hobbled out toward them. “Hello!”

  “Hi, Thor.” Nick gestured to Lowry. “This is Duff’s daughter, Lowry.”

  Lowry stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Thor.”

  Thor shook her hand and then stuck his thumb out toward the barn. “I was getting ready to feed the horses. Do you want to help me?”

  Lowry’s eyes lit up. “Sure.”

  Nick followed Lowry and Thor to the barn while Duff walked around the house. The horses trotted up to the gate near the barn, and Thor pointed out each horse and its name to Lowry. When the horses reached the gate to the corral, Thor reached across the fence, running his hand over the long fuzzy coat of one of the horses.

  “They stay pretty furry most of the year but will start shedding soon. I’ll show you how to groom them.”

  “My grandparents have horses, so I know a little.” Lowry petted and scratched their backs while he filled the flat feeders with grain. He opened the corral gate, letting the small herd in to eat dinner.

  Lowry sat on the fence while the horses fussed with each other, vying for the grain. “Do they always push each other around like that?”

  “Yes, horses have a herd hierarchy, and the top one bosses the others, and so it goes down to the bottom horse.” He winked at Lowry. “Just like people do.”

  After they finished the grain, Thor opened the gate, and the horses wandered back into the pasture.

  Duff joined the group walking from the barn to the cottage, and Thor waved toward the hillside at the back of the house.

  “I blasted into that hill and built half the house in there to save on heating.” He gazed at the little house and gestured with his hands. “I built all of this myself.”

  Thor reminisced while they walked through the simple house and then led them onto a sunny screened-in porch with a swing. He pointed to a cistern and the small garden just beginning to grow on the sunny side of the property. Behind the garden was a chicken coop with a dozen hens pecking the ground for insects.

  “I’ve got tomatoes, cucumbers, and broccoli coming up, and the chickens lay a good amount of eggs. I even sell my extras in town.” He sighed. “But now my health is . . . well, the doctor tells me I need to take it easy.”

  Lowry looked up at him. “We’ll take care of everything; don’t worry.”

  Nick nodded. “You have a wonderful farm here, Thor.” He turned and placed his hand on Lowry’s shoulder. “Thor will be leaving for home in a few months, but he’s going to teach us how to care of the horses, and I found a lady that can give you some riding lessons, Lowry.”

  Duff muttered under his breath to Nick, “Which you’re also paying for, I assume.”

  “My mom taught me to ride a little.” Lowry watched the horses grazing in the pasture and then looked up at her father. “Dad, can we get a dog?”

  Her father beamed and threw his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him. “Sure, Lowry—a farm girl must have a dog.” Duff steered her toward the hover. “We’d better get back to town and settle in before dinner.”

  Thor walked with them, and Nick smiled with a wave. “We’ll finalize the papers and set a closing date.”

  Lowry climbed into the hover whi
le Duff put his hand on Thor’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about a thing, Thor. Just let us know when you’re moving, and then we’ll schedule our move.” He smiled broadly, patting Thor on the back. “And the elections are coming up. Don’t forget to vote for me before you ship out!”

  Chaos encroached with the rising seas, deeply eroding the tenets of civilization and washing away the foundation of human society . . .

  CHAPTER 27

  The Garden was quiet. The artificial lights dimmed into twilight, and the forest shifted from day to night creatures.

  Adam glided down the path. Stopping for a moment, he cocked his head to listen. He smiled at the sound of faint barking and moved toward it. As the barking became clearer, he squatted down, slowly pulling a fern branch out of his line of sight. He saw the rog barking as it struggled to loosen itself from the overgrown vines in the berry patch.

  He froze like a stone. His eyes alone moved as he studied the creature, the “skin” ripped off in places, revealing the metal beneath. Bile came to his throat as he thought of these people who considered themselves gods, so pompous as to attempt to create an animal.

  Anger brought an ancient chant into his mind. To the beat of the sound in his brain, he slowly lifted the blowgun to his lips. Poppy looked up at the sight of a human, her tail wagging feebly in the grasp of the vines.

  Poppy squealed as the first stainless steel dart entered her body. She struggled violently to no avail, and the second dart drove itself into her inner workings. Buzzing sparks discharged from the motherboard as the metal shaft crossed her circuitry. The final dart entered one of her artificial eyes, and she slowly lay down with lubricant oozing like blood upon the ground.