It was so hard to tell. These damn tall tombstones were like a maze, but at least the car was getting close. Karen finally broke clear of the last line of grave markers and wasted no time in heading for the gate. She fished the keys out of her pocket and handed them to the boy who was now openly tugging on her arm to move faster.
“Go get in the car,” she ordered him. “I’m going to call your Dad and tell him to get his butt back here. Pronto.”
The boy raced through the gate and over to the car while she started dialing for David on her cell phone. Where was he anyway? She hoped he had found the dog and was bringing her back, but she wanted him back one way or the other.
“Mom! Brandy’s by my door at the car,” Tucker’s voice floated from the other side of the vehicle. “She’s just laying there and acting like her legs don’t work!”
Argiope aurantia employs a neurotoxin to immobilize its prey for later consumption.
A second later Tucker let out a scream that made Karen’s blood run cold.
She raced to the car and ran around it to find Tucker sobbing and frantically stomping at something on the ground.
“It was on, Brandy!” he shrieked. “It bit me when I tried to pick her up!”
“Get in the car, now!” Karen ordered. “Don’t touch Brandy. There may be more on her.”
The boy tearfully did as ordered, while Karen stayed clear of the stricken dog and started dialing again. Now Tucker had been bitten and they needed to get out of here! They needed help! The body of the spider in the dirt was not unusually big, but she was taking no chances. Something was very wrong here.
She hit send, put the phone to her ear, and desperately prayed for an answer.
C’mon David… Answer the damn phone! I know your battery is still charged because I took a picture with it fifteen minutes ago. If you’ve got it set on vibrate I will kill you! You NEVER feel that!
As it turned out, he still had it set on “ring.”
Karen slowly lowered her phone and stared at the line of trees across the road. The faint sound of Amazing Grace being played on the electric guitar drifted across the lane. Adam had programmed the tune on David’s phone as a prank a little over a week ago. Now the notes played for about twenty seconds before switching off as the call went to voice mail.
Then nothing but the song of locusts disturbed the quiet.
“David!” Karen called and walked out into the middle of the shady dirt road to get closer. “David, hurry up! Tucker got bitten by something and we need to go!”
No reply.
“Daaviidd!” She clenched her fists against her thighs and stomped her foot. “Come on!”
Still nothing.
Now a new fear crawled in her gut and Karen dialed David’s cell phone again. She pushed the send button, but this time didn’t put the phone up to her ear. It only took a few seconds for the notes of Amazing Grace to sound once more, and this time she managed to zero in on their direction.
Once through the trees at the fence, there was a pasture with a large thicket of mesquite about sixty feet further away. The sound of David’s phone either came from the thicket or from the immediate other side. Karen listened to the song play until it went to voice mail, once again leaving her alone with the locusts.
“Oh no,” she breathed. “David…”
He’s not so far away. Maybe less than a hundred feet. But what’s in there with him? And how many? How many of these spiders would it take to bring down a grown man?
She wanted to go to him, but she didn’t dare. Whatever waited in that thicket would be as capable of getting her as it did David. And she still had the matter of Tucker to contend with as well. The bite could be nothing, or it might be truly serious. These spiders might look like the corn spider she knew, but if their size was different then their poison might be more potent as well.
But it’s paralytic poison. David wouldn’t be dead. Not yet.
She needed to get help.
Weyrich! I’ll go back to that little store. It’s only about five miles back, and they will know what to do. They can get a bunch of bug spray and come back for David!
Now armed with a plan she wheeled to race back for the car.
I’ll be back for you David. I promise!
But then she froze at the sight that greeted her eyes.
Tucker was beating on the back window of the car and screaming. His little face was pressed up against the glass with eyes so wide she could see their whites from where she stood. For one heart shattering second she thought another spider might be loose in the car with him, but then realized it was her he gesticulated at.
Karen whirled, trying to see which direction the threat came from.
Nothing.
Nothing loomed to threaten her. What the hell?
She looked back at the car to see the boy’s face now frozen in one long scream. He was beating the glass and pointing at the roof…but there was nothing on the roof.
Then she got it.
In a sudden horrified instant she understood what the boy meant, and at the last second she looked up…
…just as the monster descending on its web line reached her.
CHAPTER ONE
OUT OF NOWHERE
Adam hit the floor hard.
For a moment he simply sprawled there in the middle of his apartment’s small living room, doing a silent inventory of body parts. He gingerly moved each appendage, as best he could, in order to determine if anything was broken. It wouldn’t be the first time. After a bit, it became apparent he had received nothing in this latest misadventure but a couple of new bruises to add to his inventory.
Nothing worth bothering anybody over. His pride already lay in tatters so mere pratfalls didn’t faze it.
“Mr. Sellars?” a thin voice quavered from outside, “Are you alright?”
That would be his downstairs neighbor, Miss Schaffer. Now his pride felt a twinge. Miss Schaffer tottered along under the weight of eighty-five years, and yet he lived with the same likelihood of someday yelling, “Help, I’ve fallen and can’t get up!” as she did. Visions of her calling an ambulance forced him up to his hands and knees.
“I’m okay, Miss Schaffer! Only a tumble!”
Grabbing his cane from under the coffee table, Adam carefully pushed himself upright. After making sure his feet stood firmly beneath him, he made his way over to the open window.
A pleasant, late February day in Texas made for a good excuse to turn off the central heat and save money. Out through the screen, Miss Schaffer could be seen holding her little dog and peering worriedly up the stairs. He forced down a surge of rising irritation and reminded himself how a good neighbor like her might spell the difference between getting help and lying there seriously injured someday.
Moving over to the front door, he opened it and stepped out onto the landing at the top of the stairs to his apartment.
“It’s okay, Miss Schaffer,” he repeated with a friendly wave. “I just took a little fall. Nothing broken.”
“Thank goodness,” she sighed. “The management around here needs to get off their butts and get you a downstairs apartment.”
Again he suppressed a flash of irritation. His fall occurred indoors and had nothing to do with the stairs. On the other hand, he knew her concerns were valid, and figured she didn’t relish the idea of him tumbling down the stairs to arrive in a bleeding heap in front of her door. His pride might even consider itself wounded in such a scenario.
“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. “It would probably be best for all concerned.”
“That’s okay,” she responded as if guessing his thoughts, “we’re all in this together, young man. I know you would come help me if I needed it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” And in truth, he gladly would. Miss Schaffer was a good person and good neighbor, and he actually liked her when she wasn’t reminding him of everything that had gone wrong with his life.
“Well,” she continued in an obvious effort to change the
subject, “have the police ever gotten anywhere with finding your brother and his family?”
Strike two.
“Um…nothing yet, Miss Schaffer.” He smiled weakly. “I haven’t given up hope though.”
“Good for you. We can’t always help what life faces us with, but we can meet it with our chin up.”
“Thanks, Miss Schaffer.”
“Well, you look tired and I don’t want to keep you,” she continued, “but if you’re having trouble you should go down and use the new hot tub they installed by the pool.”
That idea actually merited consideration.
“Thanks again, Miss Schaffer,” he replied. “I might very well do that in a little while.”
With another wave, he retreated back into his apartment. He felt a little guilty about blowing Miss Schaffer off, but there were some things he didn’t feel like discussing with her.
After closing the door, he hobbled his way toward the computer he had been trying to reach before his legs betrayed him. Well, okay, maybe not just his legs. This time he paid closer attention to the debris lying strewn about the floor. Evidence of his diet of delivered pizza, Chinese takeout, and imported beer dominated the room.
His new life of “gainful unemployment” had caused his housekeeping skills to revert to those of his college days of yore.
He carefully navigated the terrain, deliberately avoiding the thought that a man in his condition should keep his pathways as clear as possible. Of course, doing so would be conceding he was indeed “a man in his condition,” and after all these months he still didn’t feel completely ready to do that. He made enough concessions when he strapped on those damned braces every morning.
Easing into his chair in front of the computer, he went straight to his email. A quick check revealed nothing new. With a grunt of frustration, he leaned back into his chair and pondered this latest mystery.
Oscar Pennington had promised to give him regular progress reports, even if it were to tell him there was nothing to report. And he dutifully lived up to that…until three days ago. Since then, not a peep from the private investigator. At what he charged, Adam figured it shouldn’t be too much trouble to at least have a secretary send him an email. Even if he had other cases, how hard could it be? Without any new information, there remained little for him to do but review what he already had.
There were the pictures and voice mail from David. He had turned those over to the police almost immediately upon discovering them. He thanked the stars he had possessed the foresight back then, even in the painkiller addled state he had been in, to make copies of both before handing them over. As it turned out, he heard little from the police after the first couple of weeks. At least he still had some evidence to launch an investigation of his own.
After receiving the first installment of the settlement from the trucking company a month ago, he at last had the funds to afford an investigator. Oscar Pennington came highly recommended and, to Adam’s pleased surprise, produced almost immediate results. Pennington discovered David’s cell phone had sent those pictures and that strange desperate voice mail from a location within 30 miles of a particular cell phone tower in Cole County. Unfortunately, since only one tower received the signal, they couldn’t triangulate to pin it down any further.
While that information narrowed things down, it still left roughly 3000 square miles to search. Most of it being rural farmland and pastures. A few educated guesses narrowed it down further, but the size of the search area still posed problems.
Adam closed the web browser and stared at the two pictures comprising the wallpaper on his computer. The two pictures that had accompanied the voice mail from David.
The first picture showed his nephew, Tucker, riding in the back seat of the Toyota with David and Karen up front. One of them, probably Karen, must have held the camera backward and taken the picture from near the windshield. Even though David’s phone had the camera, he preferred to drive. In the picture, Tucker sat in his booster seat, holding a plastic bucket in his lap. The expression on his face suggested he felt somewhat doubtful about whatever project his parents were getting him into. Pennington’s sharp eye had deduced they were on a dirt road from the color of the blur out the rear window.
The second picture was the strange one, and Pennington said his expert told him this was the picture David had taken right before he sent the voice message.
Slightly out of focus, it showed what he used to call a Corn Spider as a kid on the farm. The loss of focus rendered the web invisible, and the blurry arachnid seemed to simply hang from branches of the trees behind it. Pennington had pointed out the trees were large oaks in full sunlight, suggesting a pasture of some kind. Perhaps David had been trying to take a picture of something in the distance, only to have the nearby spider mess up the camera’s auto-focus when he shot through the web.
Not a lot to go on, but Pennington’s acumen impressed him. The detective warned him he would be going to Cole County soon and driving around himself, and it would be expensive since he billed by the hour, but money presented no problem and Adam told him to go ahead…and then get back to him. That had been four days ago and Adam only got two emails from him since, both on the first day.
The first reported that he contacted the Cole County Sheriff’s Dept. and talked to a Sheriff Wiley Prescott. He reported little they didn’t already know. The second stated that he had been passing flyers around town, and had gotten word from somebody who thought they had seen Tucker. He would be meeting them that afternoon.
Pennington never reported on the outcome of the meeting, or anything else.
Calls to his office only resulted in an irritated secretary assuring him that Mr. Pennington would get in touch when he got back. Yesterday, she hadn’t even bothered to answer. Adam had been slightly stunned to realize the detective remained out of town, but assumed it meant he must be hot on the trail of something. Yet if he was in Cole County then he would still be charging Adam by the hour the entire time he remained there, and those charges would add up fast. If he didn’t hear from Pennington by tonight, he intended to drive over to his office tomorrow morning and inform his secretary that he wouldn’t pay another dime until the detective got in touch with him.
Leaning forward, he moved his cursor over the little icon marked “David’s Last Call” and clicked. He kept a link to the MP3 he made of the call on his desktop. Exactly like a thousand times before, David’s voice came through sounding distant, tinny, and out of breath. It gave the impression he was holding the phone away from his mouth, perhaps taking the picture messed up by the spider.
“Karen, check your phone, dammit!” he sounded like he was whispering, but loudly in an attempt to be heard by the phone. “Karen, if you get this, then get out of here! Take Tucker and drive! Don’t wait for me, just go! Go to that little OOUUUPHH!!” There were then sounds like the phone being dropped, a long thrashing sound, and then silence as the phone somehow got disconnected.
David must have been trying to warn Karen of something, but had somehow inadvertently called Adam instead. Pennington suspected that David had not been looking at the cell phone when dialing, and had been terribly distracted or under great pressure. Sadly, the police didn’t get this piece of evidence until two weeks after David and his family disappeared.
At the time, Adam lay in the hospital courtesy of Hollard Trucking International. A haphazard job of securing a forklift on one of their trucks had resulted in it dumping the heavy piece of equipment on the car in front of Adam as he drove on I-45. He didn’t have time to dodge as the vehicle in front of him disintegrated into a tumbling mass of steel. Police later told him he should be thankful to be alive, especially since he alone survived the resulting three-car pileup.
He spent three weeks in the hospital with a busted back, paralyzed feet and weakened legs due to nerve damage, a broken forearm, broken nose, and multiple lacerations. Then he came home to learn David and his family were missing, and also discover a two wee
k old voicemail and pictures sent to him by his lost brother…apparently by mistake while under duress.
In a strange way, it kept him sane. He focused like a laser on finding David, thus not spending too much mental energy dealing with his new condition. The doctors told him the cane and the plastic foot drop braces he now wore were probably a permanent addition to his life. His legs might recover some more strength over time, but it could take years. The rest of the scars would fade.
Now he squeezed his useless feet into their rigid plastic sheaths every morning and limped or stumbled his way through the day. Every so often he would fall, invariably alarming Miss Schaffer downstairs. Most of the time he simply sat in front of his computer, on the Internet researching anything he thought might be of use regarding David’s disappearance.
With a sigh of disgust, Adam pushed himself away from the monitor.
There remained little to be done here, and Miss Schaffer’s suggestion regarding the hot tub had been the best advice he heard all day. Pulling himself to his feet, he grabbed his cane and tottered down the hall to his bedroom. It took him a few minutes to change into his swim trunks, and get his braces back on, before he snatched a towel out of the closet and headed for the front door.
“Who knows,” he grumbled to himself, “maybe there will be a hot girl down there who will take pity and talk to the crippled guy for a minute before finding an excuse to run back to her apartment.” He and his fiancée, Ellen, had broken up a couple of months before the accident. As much as he tried to tell himself differently, he had a gut feeling his dating days were over. He didn’t exactly count as prime mating material anymore.
Now fortified with a healthy dose of self pity, Adam was ready to face the world. He reached for the doorknob just as a loud, firm knock sounded on the door. Startled, he stopped and regarded it.
“Who is it?” he called, his hand already on the knob.
“Detective Andrew Rice, Houston Police Department,” a male voice answered through the door. “May I speak with you for a moment?”
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