Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

But before she could, her eyes widened and the scream died in her dry throat.

Something was crawling over the scuttling mass of spiders, shoving them out of its way. It was itself a spider, but a size Hannah thought impossible. It was large as a cat. It shuffled aside its tiny cousins to crouch on the sill. Its ugly nest of unblinking eyes-like enormous drops of glistening black oil sitting in a dense carpet of bristles-seemed to fix on Hannah. The creature’s legs were as thick as carrots.

Hannah stared, shaking. It’s huge it’s huge it’s huge! It was big enough to simply smash the window in.

As she watched, frozen solid, the huge spider brought one leg before its head and raised its horny foot vertically in front of its curved fangs. The breathing holes beneath its abdomen let out an audible hiss.

Oh my God, thought Hannah. It’s shushing me to stay quiet.

The large spider began scooping the smaller spiders aside. The hundreds of legs withdrew from probing the gaps around her window and the spiders fell away. As they did, the giant, feline spider gracefully and silently stepped back and down and out of sight. In just a few seconds, all the spiders were gone. It was as if they’d never been there; as if they’d been a wakeful extension to her nightmare in the cage. Except she could see on the inside sill the hairy section of leg she’d sliced with the catch, lying like a bit of black pipe cleaner. Her bed was shaking. She realized it was her heart pounding.

They were coming to get her. She knew it. Just as she knew that the horrible thing she’d picked up that afternoon-the dead bird that someone had cut up and changed -had been left for her and no one else. Her urge was to throw the covers over her head and crawl into a ball.

That won’t help! she told herself. This was like those movies on the TV where the idiots did nothing instead of doing something, like locking the door or driving away or calling the cops.

Hannah swung her legs over the bed and padded to the door. There was a brass latch under the handle. She turned it and tried the handle. Locked. Good. But there was a two-centimeter gap under the door. More than enough room for the smaller spiders to crawl through.

Then she heard a sound that made the soles of her feet tingle.

A long, low squeak.

The back door was swinging open. They were coming.

She had to wake Mum and Dad and Miriam! Hannah opened her mouth and drew back a deep breath-

No! You yell, and the spiders will have to kill them. They’re here for you!

Hannah’s eyes began to sting and her vision softened with tears. What should she do? She looked around for something to shove under the door.

There was a framed picture on the wall; it was a poster of Hermione Granger (whose real name was Emma) and she’d begged and begged her parents for it and agreed to pay it off with her pocket money. The frame was thick plasticky stuff cast and colored to look like wood; it was as thick as her thumb. She ran to it and took its bottom edge. It was heavy. She strained and lifted. The picture came off its hook suddenly and its weight tipped her backward. She threw back one foot and dropped her arms, gaining control just before she overbalanced. She turned and staggered to the door.

Black spindly legs were probing through the gap. A row of spiders was hunched there, low on their bellies, starting to crawl under.

Hannah dropped Hermione’s picture facedown on the carpet, expecting the crash of breaking glass. But it just thudded. It’s plastic, she realized gratefully. She slid the poster toward the door. It won’t fit! she thought wildly. It’s too big! It’ll jam on the frame and they’ll just crawl right over it and get me and bite me and drag me out the back door and through the rain and down…

… to the woods.

The thought of the Carmichael Road woods suddenly drenched her with more terror than the sight of the searching, testing, hairy legs. They were nearly in. She aimed the picture frame square at the door and shoved.

It squashed the spiders back and slid neatly between the jambs with just a couple of millimeters to spare each side. A nearly perfect fit.

Hannah knelt on the floor, eyes wide, breathing hard, suddenly wanting badly to go to the toilet. Rain rumbled on the roof.

Then the picture frame moved.

It slid back into the room a centimeter. Then another. The spiders were pushing it back.

Hannah scampered forward and sat all her weight on the frame.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a scratching at the door, and the handle began to slowly twist. First one way. Then the other. Then it jiggled-click, click, click. She could imagine monstrous, thorny feet on the other side pressed hard against the door.

She realized her lip was trembling. She was going to cry.

Stop it. Stop it.

The scratching stopped. The door knob ceased moving.

Quiet, except the hushed hiss of rain.

They’ve gone, she thought. Relief as sweet as cordial flooded through her. They’ve gone.

Then she heard another slow, sly noise down the hall.

The door to Miriam’s bedroom was creaking open.

N icholas woke bleary-eyed with a splitting headache. It was quarter to nine. How had he slept so late? Then he remembered how frustratingly last night had gone. What a fractured quorum he’d convened: an Indian Christian minister, a recent widow arcane as a sphinx, a white witch forced a thousand kilometers away… and himself.

Well, it was like the old saying: If you want something fucked up properly, form a committee. That’s what he’d done. Who knew how much later into the night Pritam Anand and Laine Boye had kept arguing about whether Quill was alive or dead, whether the murders were connected or coincidence. Nicholas felt a fool for telling them so much.

Fuck them both.

He believed more than ever what he’d said last night: Quill was smart. She knew no one in their right mind could believe that a woman could live so long, could hide in the middle of a crowded suburb, could get away with so many murders.

He showered swiftly, dressed, slipped on the elderwood necklace. There was a pay phone outside the shops on Myrtle Street. He needed to see how Suzette was doing.

The world outside felt waterlogged. The torrential rain last night had swelled the gutters to fast-running freshets. The footpaths were wet, and the grass strips flanking them leaked water onto contiguous driveways. Gray clouds massed overhead, pressing down like monstrous fists and threatening to finish work left undone.

Nicholas jingled his pocket-a few coins, enough to phone Sydney and see if Nelson was improving. What if he wasn’t? What if he got worse? What if he died? He felt a slow wheel of fear tighten straps in his gut. Then it will be your fault.

A car slowed behind him. Then another vehicle slowed and stopped a few steps ahead of him. Police cars. Four doors opened and four officers stepped around him.

“Mr. Close?”

Nicholas recognized two of the police and smiled without an ounce of fondness. It was Waller, accompanied again by her huge mountain gorilla constable.

“Fossey and Silverback, together again. Don’t you guys miss Rwanda?”

Waller’s scowl didn’t budge a millimeter.

“Mr. Close, we’d like to ask you some questions.”

P ritam had been up since six.

He’d awoken sore and cold on the pew, and the sight that greeted his eyes was of Christ suddenly sideways, as if God had decided crucifixion was, in fact, a poor fate for His only begotten son and so had uprooted the cross.

Pritam stood, shambled to the presbytery, put on the kettle. He felt as if he’d had no sleep at all. Sipping tea, he unplugged the telephone, plugged in the modem, and switched on the church laptop.