In the Spider's House

by Sarah Diamond

  The drive up that hill lasted for ever. I was full of a leaden conviction that when I reached the top, I’d see exactly what I had last week: the two parked police cars outside the house, Liz deep in conversation with a uniformed officer in the open front doorway. The closer I got to the top of the hill, the more certain I became—this didn’t feel at all like apprehension, but simple knowledge—and I forced myself to drive a little faster, needing to see for myself.

  The second I crested the hill, relief overcame me, closely followed by amazement—I’d been so sure I’d had a real premonition, and it had been nothing but panic and imagination after all. The house was exactly as it had been when I’d left earlier. Driving down towards it, I felt sheepish and embarrassed and delighted. My heart had been pounding like a hell-for-leather drum solo, but as I turned into the driveway, it had almost returned to its normal speed.

  I was getting out of the car when Liz’s front door opened and she came out; apprehension jumped back up inside me, then retreated slightly. Her expression was concerned rather than appalled, and there was no real urgency in her movements. ‘Anna, dear,’ she said. ‘Carl came back about ten minutes ago; you’ve just missed him.’

  I stared at her, confused. ‘What was he doing here? He’s supposed to be at work.’

  ‘He got some bad news from home. His father collapsed earlier, and they’ve taken him to hospital—a heart attack, apparently, there’s no telling whether he’ll be all right yet. He told me he’d tried to call you, but your mobile was switched off. He said he was going straight to the hospital, and didn’t know how long he’d be gone for. He took a little overnight case with him, so he’s probably going to be some time.’

  ‘Of course. His parents live a good five hours’ drive away—God, how terrible.’ Disorientated by bad news that leapt out from the most unexpected direction, I struggled to find the right thing to say. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘He said he’d give you a ring later tonight, to let you know what was happening. I’m so awfully sorry. I do hope his father’s all right.’

  ‘Me, too,’ I said. ‘Well, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.’

  When I let myself into the house, the door to the kitchen was ajar, and I saw the folded note on the table straight away. Unfolding it, I read a quickly scrawled summary of what I’d already heard. Will try to call between 8 and 9, he’d finished, Love Cx. I thought I could still smell a faint hint of his aftershave on the air.

  Going upstairs, I saw a jumble of clothes on the bed, telling me he’d packed the few things he’d need in an all-time hurry—tidiness was as inherent to his personality as pragmatism. I hurried over to the phone, pressed out his mobile number and was put straight through to his voicemail service. Please leave your message after the tone. ‘Carl,’ I said, ‘it’s me. Look, I’m really sorry—I’ve just heard. Do try and call later, if you can. You know I’m thinking about you.’

  I hung up. As I went back downstairs, my concerns were running on two levels at once. On one hand, I was thinking about Carl, how worried he must be as he began the endless drive to the town where he’d grown up; my heart went out to his whole family, from the brother I barely knew to the mother who’d always made me feel awkward. But, beneath that slightly self-conscious sympathy, other things rumbled—and, while I castigated myself for selfishness, the creeping unease that accompanied them couldn’t be denied. No matter what happened, Carl wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. For the very first time, I’d be spending the night here alone.

  The slow descent into evening lasted for an eternity. I sat in the living room and tried to concentrate on a book I hadn’t read for some time, longing for the plot to pick me up and pull me out of the present. But I couldn’t have been much less distracted by the Yellow Pages. All the time, I was horribly aware of the shadows deepening around me, the spectacular rosy-mauve sunset beginning to tint everything, and threatening imminent darkness. As I stared at the words on the page, Geraldine’s voice drifted back to me, as though from a distant room. I can’t quite forgive myself for not taking the threat as seriously as I should have done, she’d said. I’d had him for eight years…

  Socks lying dead on the garden path. Ragged, sexless breathing down the receiver. Shards of glass glittering up from this very carpet, in this very room…

  For no reason that I could think of, an image of Helen flashed hard behind my eyes. How she’d looked at me when Petra had blithely announced the secret of my research, in a WI bake sale a thousand years ago. She had, I remembered, seen my school photograph of Rebecca on the kitchen table shortly after that evening, and she’d seen me talking to Geraldine today. I found myself recalling the things that had always disturbed me about her, practically from the first time we’d met. That stillness. That watchfulness. The force field of silence that seemed to surround her, that had never looked like shyness to me at all.

  I put the book down and turned on the television to banish the silence, then went into the kitchen. I wasn’t at all hungry, but made dinner anyway; it was the normal thing to do, and, alone in this odd emptiness, normality became beautiful, longed for. The deepening sunset flooded the kitchen with light the colour of fire as I sat down and tried my best to eat. Through the half-open door that led into the living room, a studio audience exploded into raucous laughter.

  When I’d finished eating and washed up, it was almost too dark to see properly. I put the lights on and drew blinds and curtains, what should have been utterly mundane taking on a new and ominous significance. The night was beginning. I sat back down in front of the television as I’d picked up the book earlier, with every bit as much success. At five to nine, the phone shrilled beside me, almost stopping my heart.

  I forced myself to answer it, tense as taut elastic. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Annie? It’s me.’

  I recognised Carl’s voice—it sounded distant and blurred, but that didn’t matter, it was his. ‘How are you?’ I asked at once, then, a split second later, ‘How’s your father? What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s out of danger, thank God. We only heard a few minutes ago ourselves—I called you as soon as I could. We’re at the hospital. They’re keeping him in for a few days, to be on the safe side.’ He exhaled deeply and I felt his exhaustion, and his relief. ‘Christ, it’s been a nightmare. I wish you were here right now… I should have stuck around, waited for you to get home…’

  ‘I know you couldn’t do that,’ I said gently. ‘But it doesn’t matter now. It’s all right now.’

  A moment’s silence, entirely devoid of the awkwardness that had characterised our recent conversations. His father’s heart attack seemed to have driven us closer together, and whether that feeling was temporary or not, it was real. ‘How’s your mother?’ I asked.

  ‘Badly shaken…well, you can imagine. Nick and I are staying with her overnight—he’s driven down as well. Anyway, I’ll be home as soon as I can. I should be back tomorrow evening.’

  ‘See you then,’ I said. ‘I love you, Carl.’

  ‘I love you too. I’ll give you a ring before I leave. Night, Annie. Sweet dreams.’

  I hung up with a melting sense of relief, but, as the minutes inched past, anxiety began to creep in again, replacing it little by little. Now Carl’s father was definitely out of danger, there was nothing left but my own fear. It whispered insidiously from everything around me: the cheerful and distant voices from the television, the ambiguous silence beyond them. The shelf where the Tiffany lamp had been. And again, I heard Geraldine’s voice: I can’t quite forgive myself for not taking the threat as seriously as I should have done…

  Checking my watch, I saw the time was only half-nine, and realised it didn’t matter. The sooner I went to bed, the sooner the morning would come. Sitting alone down here with nothing but my own thoughts had become appalling. Turning everything off, I double-checked that all the windows were closed and both doors were locked and bolted—more importantly than anything, that the burgla
r alarm was set. Upstairs, I washed and brushed myself ready for bed, slid in between cool, sweet-smelling sheets, squeezing my eyes shut.

  For some time I couldn’t sleep, and the cry of a bird outside had me sitting up, heart thumping erratically in my chest. Then no further noises came. Maybe an hour passed in which reality and imagination began to blur, but I still felt a long way away from oblivion. This isn’t going to happen, I thought vaguely, I’m never going to get any sleep tonight, then suddenly I was walking through Bournemouth’s town centre in dazzling afternoon sunshine. On my right, the café was coming closer. The people inside shouldn’t see me, I realised, mustn’t see me, they were dangerous. As I reached it, I noticed that the windows had been smashed, and couldn’t stop myself glancing in quickly; the tables and chairs had been stacked neatly in the corners, and a group of uniformed primary schoolchildren stood posing for a photograph. I recognised Geraldine, Melanie Cook, Eleanor and Agnes Corbett. I couldn’t see Rebecca at all.

  It didn’t matter. I was lucky they hadn’t seen me. Besides, I was in a hurry, even though I wasn’t sure why.

  I turned down a side road, was unsurprised to find myself in verdant semi-rural greenery, approaching a large deserted house with boarded-up windows and a palpable air of desolation. It was a sad but oddly beautiful picture in the sunlight, under the luminous-blue sky. As I approached, a faint smell of decay and wet rot became gradually stronger. The front door looked like it had gone a long time ago, and the light caught odd silvery glints in front of the darkened doorway. It was a web, I realised, spun across it as if to protect whatever lived inside. Its jagged circles closed in around the thick-legged spider at its centre; grotesquely orange and black and bristly, the largest I’d ever seen.

  With drugged and enigmatic indifference, I reached out and tore the web apart. Its clammy strands clung to my fingers. The spider fell to the ground and scuttled into the house, where it was immediately lost in the shadows. Around me, the light was heavy and strange and unnatural, as if the sun was shining through yellow glass.

  Through the door, I stepped into the hallway. The smell of decay was overpowering here, but still I felt nothing but vague curiosity. In huge rotted holes in the walls, lavish bouquets of wildflowers had been arranged with a florist’s meticulous care. I set my foot on the first stair, and prepared to discover the upstairs rooms.

  I was woken by the thin scream of the burglar alarm.

  I’d heard it before, when the workmen had first fitted it. Then, it had been a few seconds’ demonstration only, devoid of real power. Now, however, it hit me like a bucket of freezing water. That soulless inhuman fire-alarm sound, repetitive rhythmic shrieks that seemed to throb throughout the house, far louder than I remembered—deafeningly, unbearably loud. It was impossible to make out any other noises behind it. It blocked out everything. It blocked out thought.

  The taste of raw animal terror filled my mouth, bright and metallic. The scream of the alarm sounded like a rusty nail being yanked free of a board. Eee. Eee. Eee. The idea of going downstairs was unthinkable, but the idea of staying here was worse—imagining unheard footsteps ascending the stairs, I inched out of bed. The lamp on the bedside table had a heavy ceramic base, and was the only makeshift weapon to hand. Unplugging it, I wound up the flex and held the base out in front of me like a club, began edging out of the room, across the landing. The alarm shrieked on and on. I saw nobody.

  I didn’t dare switch any lights on for fear that they’d pinpoint my progress downstairs—the house was solely illuminated by a thin wash of moonlight. The door to the living room stood slightly ajar. As I reached the bottom stair, I realised what had triggered the alarm: not an intruder, but a thrown rock. It lay next to the television in a silvery glitter of broken glass. The sound of the alarm had become a dull auger repeatedly digging into my brain. Putting the lamp down on the hallway cabinet, I went to turn it off. It died in one last electronic scream, before giving way to absolute silence.

  I walked into the living room as if in a dream. The police’ll be here soon, I was telling myself. The alarm should have alerted the station the second it was triggered. It was then that I noticed the folded square of paper that had been attached to the rock with an elastic band. I was barefoot and approached it gingerly, checking for treacherous glass slivers at every step. I untied the note, and unfolded it with hands that didn’t feel like mine at all. A piece of A4 paper stared back at me in the moonlight, pasted letters obviously cut from some newspaper or magazine. The sight froze me up inside.

  THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING FORGET REBECCA FISHER TELL THE POLICE AND YOU WILL DIE

  That final word. Three mismatched letters. It seemed to pull at me, to suck at me like a whirlpool—I felt my fears swirling together and spiralling down into it. Socks, I thought, Geraldine’s dog. This isn’t just a threat, they’d do it, they’d kill me. And then it hit me: if the police weren’t already on their way, they’d be getting ready to begin the journey. I wouldn’t be able to lie to them in person at all convincingly. They’d see I was terrified and that the window had been smashed, and they’d ask me over and over again what had really happened. I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep the truth to myself, not in the face of that relentless, well-meant questioning—

  TELL THE POLICE AND YOU WILL DIE, I read again, and the paper fell from my hand unnoticed—I was hurrying to the telephone, desperately hunting through the phone book for the number I wanted. It seemed to take an age to find it. In my mind, I could see the police car travelling gradually closer. At last, I pressed out the number and heard the voice speak in my ear. ‘Wareham Police Station. Can I help you?’

  Acting had become life and death in its most literal sense. Frantically, I struggled for the right tone, sheepish, a little guilty, and was amazed to hear it emerge just as I’d wanted it to. ‘Well, yes. Listen, this is a bit awkward, but I’ve had a burglar alarm fitted recently, the kind that alerts you as soon as it’s triggered. I set it off myself just now by accident; I opened the back door and forgot I’d left it on. You don’t need to send a car round, everything’s fine here.’

  Clear disapproval came down the line. ‘Can I take your address?’

  ‘Number four Ploughman’s Lane. Abbots Newton.’

  Another pause, this one longer. At any second, I thought, flashing blue lights could interrupt the moonlight, and I’d hear the police car pulling into the driveway outside. When the voice came again, its irritation was bordering on exasperation.

  ‘Two officers were on their way. I’ve just called them back. You know, it’s important that you’re very careful with that type of system. We have better things to do with our time than go haring off to false alarms right, left and centre.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ I heard my chastened, conciliatory voice as though from someone else. ‘I’ll be a lot more careful in future.’

  ‘I hope so. Goodbye, madam.’

  I hung up. My relief was as nauseating as my earlier fear had been. The note lay on the carpet by the scatter of broken glass, and its mismatched words reminded me I was in more danger than I’d ever imagined. Looking at my watch, I saw that the time was ten to midnight. I couldn’t stay in this house, I realised. Not tonight.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  LIZ’S DOORBELL CHIMES sounded inexpressibly strange at this time and in this situation. As I stood outside her house in the middle of the night wearing slippers and a dressing gown, their cheery domesticity rang out, surreal and muted behind a frosted glass panel. Hearing them die away in the unrelieved darkness, panic took hold of me; I pressed the doorbell again, harder, held it down till I saw a light go on in the bedroom upstairs.

  A window flew open above me. Liz poked her head out. Her hair was scraped back in a bun, her disorientation palpable.

  ‘Anna? My God, what’s going on? When I heard your alarm, I called the police, and—’

  ‘Please, Liz, let me in. Something’s happened, something awful—someone threw a stone, and—’ />
  The face had gone. Through the frosted glass, I saw the hallway light go on, heard tiny, muffled footsteps hurrying down the stairs. The door creaked open sharply. ‘What’s happened?’ Liz demanded, then, at once, ‘Come in. Come on in.’

  I did, slamming the door behind me as if to shut out a wild animal hot on my heels. The crowded coziness of the hallway was as bizarre as the door’s chimes had been. Harsh center lights blazed down on ornaments and picture frames, and Liz’s terrified eyes. ‘Someone threw a stone through my window, just now,’ I said. ‘Someone’s—they’ve threatened to kill me—’

  ‘Who threatened you? What do you mean?’ I was about to reply when she spoke again, and I could see her attempting to rebuild the only world she knew around her; a world of normality, and certainty, and cast-iron safety you breathed in with the air. ‘Come on into the kitchen, dear. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  I followed her in, aware of the bizarre picture I made—I’d thrown crucial belongings into my handbag in the frantic minutes before leaving the house, wore the bag over my toweling dressing gown, my nightshirt. Sitting down at the table, I opened the bag and fumbled inside it as Liz put the kettle on. ‘This was tied to the rock they broke my window with,’ I said, extracting the folded A4. ‘Read it.’

  She took it, unfolded it. I saw horror in her eyes and the set of her mouth, a mirror image of my own reaction maybe ten minutes ago. ‘Oh my God,’ she said quickly. ‘Oh my God, Anna.’

  ‘Should I tell the police?’ The sight of her face brought panic crashing back; there was no safe haven here, just a kindly and frightened middle-aged woman I’d grown to like immensely, who I’d been wildly irresponsible to involve in the matter at all. ‘Do you think I should let them know about this, or—’