“Will do.”
Adam watched the door pull shut.
Hobbling over to the window, Adam’s eyes followed the pair as they crossed the parking lot and got back into the station wagon. Knowing they could see him in his position at the window, he gave a wry salute as they turned on their lights and pulled away. Then he drew the curtain shut and turned to face the room.
Nothing but the sound of the unit’s air conditioner disturbed the quiet.
Pulling the suitcase up onto the bed, he unzipped the top and stared at the folded clothes within. Stroking his chin, he gazed at the contents without really seeing them. After a moment’s pause he turned away from the suitcase and limped over to the corner where the large spider sat serenely in its web.
Adam pondered the spider in thoughtful silence. He tilted his head and examined the big arachnid. It seemed to watch him back from its position in the center of its web. Then he stared at the floor for a moment, tapping his fingers on the handle of his cane, before returning his gaze to the creature in the totem.
“How about that, Charlotte,” he finally murmured. “She called him ‘Uncle.’”
###
Three blocks away, Antonio waited patiently for the light to turn green.
Looking over at the passenger seat, he could see his niece staring grimly ahead, wrapped in her own thoughts. She had not spoken a word since they left the motel room and, while never the most talkative of companions, Antonio began to wonder what was on her mind.
“A penny for your thoughts,” he offered, accelerating again once the light changed.
“They should be so cheap.”
Antonio mulled that one over for a minute, while constantly checking his rear view mirror for any signs of them being followed. Nothing materialized.
“You want to tell me about it?” He glanced over to his brooding assistant. “I was expecting to get an earful about what you deduced from the Spider People’s totem. Instead I gather there must not have been much significance to the object.”
“The totem is significant, Uncle,” Olivia sighed and turned her head away, looking out the window as she spoke. “It confirms a couple of my theories regarding the Matriarch.”
“Which explains your current giddiness.” Antonio regarded the slim figure beside him with a raised brow. “If you don’t calm yourself I may have to take stern measures.”
No reply.
“Okay, Olivia. Out with it.”
“I’m fine, Uncle. I merely need to think.”
“About this mission?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” She put her elbow on the door and rested her chin in her hand while continuing to stare out into the night.
Antonio eyed her judiciously then decided to change tactics.
“What do you think of Adam Sellars’ odds of surviving the night?”
Olivia closed her eyes and for a second he wondered if she were going to answer.
“Better than before,” she finally replied. “But still hard to define at a level I would like.”
“Welcome to my world,” he chuckled. “Sometimes you simply have to make the hard calls.”
He looked over to see Olivia glaring at him.
“I just had a man thank me for putting him in a room with a bunch of people who have already tried to kill him three times…and he has no idea what he’s about to run into. I did that. He has done us absolutely no harm, but we are ruthlessly risking his life for our own ends under the guise of helping him.”
Antonio smiled and shook his head.
“Have you lied to him about any of this, Olivia? Have you pretended to be some kind of saint come down from on high to help him out of the goodness of your heart? Adam is well aware we have our own interests in this matter, and has accepted that. And we are helping him. He would be dead if it weren’t for us. We are hardly the villains here.”
Olivia gave him a long steady look before turning away.
“I suppose you’re right.” She went back to staring out into the darkness.
Antonio eyed her suspiciously. That was way too easy.
“Okay, Olivia. I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. What’s really wrong? You knew what kind of situation we were putting him into when you devised this plan.”
“I know.” She frowned out at the blackness. “It was my theory and my plan. I’m the one who put Mr. Sellars in that room. I understood the risk, at least to the best I could calculate, when I did it. I guess I’m just a little unsettled with the idea of him thanking me for it.”
“So he’s a nice guy.”
“Indeed.” Olivia raised both eyebrows, chin back in her hand. “I wonder if he will be so thankful if he survives this encounter, and gets a real idea of what he’s up against. If my theory on who they will send is correct, Mr. Sellars may be in for a very unpleasant meeting.”
###
“Uncle Adam? Uncle Adam, wake up.”
Tucker’s voice cut through Adam’s unconscious mind like a knife.
He had been dreaming of Olivia.
In the dream, she had been standing in the middle of a gravel road, the trees on each side arcing high overhead, and holding the totem with the live spider in it. She was wearing a tan doeskin dress, like a Native American out of an old western, and moccasins on her feet. She seemed to be trying to tell him something, explaining things in her usual calm and pedantic style, but he couldn’t make it out. He tried to move closer, in order to hear better, but something resisted him.
Then the spider in the totem began to move.
It started slowly creeping downwards, toward the edge of the hoop and the pole itself. Adam watched in horror as it reached the bottom of its web and positioned itself at the spot where the shaft of the totem joined the loop. Olivia continued to speak to him, oblivious to the danger beside her, as the spider began to descend the shaft toward her hand.
Adam tried to scream a warning, but no sound came out. He fought against whatever held him, doing his utmost to get her to look to her right and see the danger.
“Uncle Adam, wake up.”
The spider descended, now only inches from her thumb.
“Uncle Adam, wake up!”
Adam shot up in bed, his sheets drenched, gasping for breath. Disoriented, he shook his head, trying to clear it of the tendrils of the dream that didn’t seem to want to let go. A wild glance around revealed him to be in the same hotel room he had fallen asleep in earlier tonight. A quick check showed the totem still stood in the corner, with the spider hanging immobile in the center. Then his eyes settled on the dim figure standing at the end of his bed and widened in surprise.
“Tucker?”
For a second, Adam struggled to recognize the boy at the end of the bed. Tucker had grown, at least an inch or two, since he had last seen him, and his hair had been cut in a short buzz-cut. He also wasn’t the slightly chubby kid Adam remembered from nine months ago, but leaner and seemingly fitter.
The boy didn’t answer. He looked at Adam for a second or two longer then turned and walked to the door going to the inner hallway of the hotel.
“Hey, Tucker! Wait!”
Adam threw aside the sheets and started pulling on his braces. He had slept in his clothes, wanting to be able to get up on short notice, but removed his braces because sweating inside of them while sleeping would burn the skin of his legs.
He heard the hallway door open, and light from the hotel hall poured into the room for a brief second before the door slammed shut again.
“Tucker!”
He almost ripped the last Velcro strap in his hurry to pull it through the buckle and slap it home. Pushing himself up out of bed, he snatched his cane from the lamp table and staggered after the boy.
Almost immediately, he caught his toe on the carpet and hit the floor.
Swearing violently, he rolled to his stomach while trying not to bump into the spider bearing totem and bringing it down on top of him.
Yeah, that would look gr
eat, Adam. Just march out there with their totem down around your shoulders and their big-ass spider sitting on top of your head. That’ll impress the hell out of them. Now slow down, get a hold of yourself, and go out there and do this right.
Levering himself to his feet, he looked at the totem for a moment and considered taking it with him. As grisly as the thing was, it still represented a promise on the part of these people not to kill him on sight. Not to mention, he could use it as a substitute for his cane. Then the image from his dream reared in his mind and he dismissed the idea.
“Sorry, Charlotte,” he muttered at the spider, “but I don’t trust you. Maybe some other time.” With that, he limped to the doorway and pulled it open.
The hallway was something out of a nightmare.
Spider webs shrouded the ceiling and walls, turning it into a pale tunnel. Even worse, these webs were occupied. Large, yellow-and-black orb weavers hung everywhere, along the walls and in the door frames. Most were smaller than the one in the totem, but it still left them plenty of room to be the size of a healthy corn spider.
And there were a lot of them.
They glared down into the hallway from all directions. Some even clung to the ceiling. Overall there must have been hundreds of spiders carpeting the walls and ceiling with their webs and gaudy bodies.
“Come on out, boy.” It was the voice of an old woman. “They won’t hurt you. They won’t do anythin’ unless Grandma Lilah tells them to. Now let’s have a look at you.”
Grandma Lilah? Aw crap, this is the woman Antonio called the deadliest person on the planet.
“Well now, I find that downright flatterin’. But I ain’t here to kill you, boy. I’m here to talk. You’re here under a sign of parlay, and we honor the old ways.”
Oh right. She reads minds, too. C’mon Adam, do what you gotta do.
Taking infinite care not to brush a web or bump into one of the nearby arachnids, Adam stepped into the hallway. Looking to his right, deeper into the hotel, he saw an old woman standing about fifteen feet away, in the middle of the passageway.
She looked like the type of old woman you would find rocking on the front porch in some tiny town or farm in backwoods Texas. Hunched with age, she wore a patterned, old-fashioned dress and a lace bonnet on her head. She clasped a rough wooden cane in one withered hand and held a black purse in the other. She could have been anybody’s grandmother.
If it weren’t for her eyes being sewn shut.
He had already heard about this feature of the old woman, but seeing it for himself was still rather unnerving. The way her mouth twisted into a grin told him she was reading his apprehension. Trusting nothing, he looked to the left in order to make sure there weren’t going to be any surprises behind him…and nearly choked from shock.
The corridor extended another twenty feet in that direction, going past the doors of another pair of rooms before ending in a big glass exit door. Spiders shrouded the hallway with their webs all the way to the end, but it was the one at the exit door itself that commanded his disbelieving attention. Unlike the other spiders, this one didn’t have a web.
It didn’t need one.
This mammoth specimen hung in the doorway by the simple expediency of reaching entirely across the doorway and hanging onto the doorframe itself. Its black legs, as thick as broomsticks, spanned the opening with ease. Its body appeared about the size of a large dog, and its distinctive markings gave the impression it frowned at the world before it. Overall, the thing must have had a leg span of four feet.
“Oh, shit!” Adam gulped and looked wildly back at the old woman. “What the hell is that thing?!” Suddenly the hallway felt much smaller, and the webs and spiders seemed to crowd closer than before. A quick glance back at the door he had come from revealed two spiders had already made their home in it since he had used it.
“Calm down!” the old woman snapped. “She’s only there to keep you from doin’ somethin’ stupid. You ain’t intendin’ on doing somethin’ stupid, are you?”
“No, ma’am,” he breathed, trying to stay still and maintain control. He still had a hard time wrapping his mind around the creature in the doorway, and something his biology teacher in high school said started nagging at the back of his head. Something about chitin.
“Good. You’ve got manners. That’s a sign of intelligence. Too many people lack manners these days. They confuse bein’ rude with bein’ in control.”
Adam tried to focus on what she was saying but was having a hard time taking his attention off the big spider in the doorway. He knew his next nightmare wouldn’t be featuring some puny six-inch spider in a totem. With a shudder, he wondered how fast the thing could cover the twenty feet between him and it.
“Pretty dang fast,” the old woman cackled. “But I told you, she ain’t gonna do it. Now, Adam Sellars, turn around and look at me. We got business, and I ain’t got all night.”
“Right.” Adam took a deep breath and, with an effort of will, turned his back on the big arachnid and faced the old woman again.
Painfully aware of the huge spider behind him, and the multitude hanging around him, he found it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. At the same time, he wondered if that might not be precisely their reason for being here. However impossible their existence, they were here and he was going to have to accept and deal with their presence if he wanted to accomplish what he had come here for.
“I’m here to talk about getting Tucker back,” Adam recovered and forced himself to focus on the woman in front of him. “I understand he’s still alive.”
“You just saw him a few minutes ago,” Grandma Lilah retorted. “He’s fine. I’m sorry about what happened to his folks. That weren’t our doin’, and it couldn’t be helped. You’ll just have to take my word on it. We took care of the boy though.”
“Okay.” Adam fought down the urge to demand to be told what happened to David and Karen. He reminded himself he wasn’t in a position to demand anything, and needed to focus on Tucker. “Then I thank you for helping Tucker. If you’ll bring him back, I’ll take him and go. I promise I won’t bother any of you ever again. Whatever secrets you think I know, I’ll keep as if they’re my own.”
Another glance around the hallway revealed no sign of Tucker…but the huge spider still hung in its position over the exit. He returned his attention to the old woman, who was shaking her head with a grim smile.
“No, Adam Sellars,” she chuckled, “it ain’t quite that easy. I’m afraid it ain’t that easy at all.”
“But, the totem…”
“Is for parlay,” she snapped. “It means we’re willing to negotiate an end to this nonsense without blowing your head off at the sight of you. I ain’t started negotiatin’ yet. I’m amazed the Dog People thought of it, though. This new chief of theirs must be clever. We thought they had no use for all of the old ways. I wonder what their angle is in all this?”
Chief? Dog People? What the hell is going on here?
“I’ll be,” the old woman cackled in glee. “They ain’t told you nuthin’ have they! It looks like this new chief of theirs wants to try and talk to us, but they decided to use you to see if this way would work or not. Not bad…if it does work, you don’t know nothin’ that could hurt them, and if it doesn’t and we blow your head off, it ain’t no skin off their nose. Not bad at all.”
“They didn’t lie to me,” Adam replied. “I knew they had their own agenda.” And now I know what that agenda was. They just stuck me up like a hat on a stick in a gunfight. I hope they make you smoke shitty cigars in Hell, Antonio.
“Hmmph,” the old lady snorted. “I suppose if you’re going to get used, you might as well be a good sport about it.”
“They saved my life, remember?” Adam immediately wished he could shove a sock in his mouth, but since he had said it felt compelled to finish the thought. “After all, you guys were already shooting at me.”
“I remember. This new chief likes to butt into things whic
h ain’t his business, too.”
Adam really wished he had kept his mouth shut now. He didn’t know how angry Grandma Lilah might be about him living this long, but he had a hunch a certain blonde somewhere out there with a huge gun had definite misgivings on that score. If she were somewhere nearby, he really didn’t want to be dwelling on his luck at not getting killed right now.
“Anyway,” the old woman scowled, “let’s get back to the negotiatin’. Turn around.”
“What?”
“I said turn around,” Grandma Lilah grumped. “Face the exit door. It’s time I made my counteroffer.”
“Counteroffer?” Adam queried as he did as instructed. His mouth went dry as his instincts told him something was up. He half expected to turn and find the large spider to be right in front of him, but to his relief the creature still hung in the doorway.
“And if you want her to stay there, you’ll stand still.” He could hear the old woman’s voice drawing nearer. Shudders ran up his spine at the thought of her being so close behind him. The close proximity of all the spiders around him was already starting to make him feel a bit claustrophobic, and the beast in the doorway was freaking him out.
“But why a counteroffer?” He tried to stay focused on the subject. “I don’t want anything else. I only want to get Tucker, and get on with life.”
“You don’t want nothin’ else?” the old woman chuckled right behind his shoulder, causing him to fight not to cringe. “You don’t know what I’m offerin’ yet. Now hush for a spell and let me concentrate. Don’t talk again until I speak.”
Adam felt the old woman put her hands in the middle of his back, and gently poke and prod her way up and down his spine. Her fingers scuttled like spiders over his vertebrae, and once again he forced himself not to shudder or start forward. She hummed some nameless tune as she did it, the kind of song you would expect to hear from some old lady in a rocker over her knitting.
“Alright, look down on your left.”
Doing as instructed, he saw she had pulled a large metal syringe out of the little black purse she carried with her. It looked like something doctors used fifty years ago, and he could swear that he saw a rust spot or two in the brief look he got at it.
Spiderstalk Page 23
