It was “attempted” because something wrapped her so tight she could barely breathe. Something she realized immediately to be webbing.
So it was real. It had actually happened.
Darkness surrounded her, although she couldn’t tell if it was due to the cocoon confining her or her surroundings. The air smelled like a stable, or a barn, and the girl got the definite impression she was indoors. She lay on her side, curled in a tight fetal position. Making things even tighter, it felt like the monster had shoved a beach ball into her gut before folding her around it and webbing her so snugly.
She didn’t remember any of it, having fainted when the monster leaped at her.
“Explain fainting,” said the last voice in the world she ever wanted to hear again.
It seemed to come from somewhere below her. She realized she didn’t so much lie as hung on her side. She must be up somewhere high. Maybe webbed to a ceiling?
“I do not understand the purpose of losing consciousness while being attacked. It makes no sense as a survival strategy.”
Hot tears leaked between her eyelids, and she clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. Why was she still going through this? Why the hell was she still alive? Why couldn’t she just die and get this over with?
At that moment, Sonni would have welcomed the gun-toting madwoman back with open arms.
“Ah! It’s a form of avoidance. How odd. I’ve never had prey do this until I started consuming humans. But you’re the second one to do so. I wonder if it’s a function of imagination?”
Sonni heard boards creak and could sense the multi-legged monstrosity moving up to her. She could imagine the horror looming over her little cocoon, its fangs raised. The woman tensed, expecting to feel their stab any second. A madly detached part of her brain realized that billions of creatures died like this every year. Hell, maybe every day. Countless, tiny little lives, screaming to an impassive universe as the spider prepared to bite.
She just never expected to be one of them.
“I’m not going to bite you…but what interesting imagery. Another product of imagination I assume.”
Sonni fought to understand. To try and grasp what the monster was talking about, or how it even managed to talk it all. From what she had made out of its mouth, it wasn’t exactly built for speech.
“When I bite a cow, a dog, or any other animal, I always pick up exactly what they are experiencing at the moment. Pain, terror, a desire to escape, then nothing. With humans, there is so much more. Pain, terror, denial, several appeals to some person named God who is never there, regrets over something never done, and one person who believed I came from a place called Hell and intended to drag them back there. Your varied reactions to impending death are fascinating. Actually, your whole concept of death is fascinating…you went and created a state of being out of nonexistence.”
Then she had an idea. It was insane, but the whole situation was insane as well.
Are you a telepath? Can you understand what I’m thinking right now?
“Yes, I am a telepath,” the voice sounded delighted. “Very good! I should have mentioned it earlier, but it didn’t occur to me since I mainly use it for deception right before I attack. A ‘prank,’ if you will. I ‘read’ what you are thinking, but I don’t always understand right away. It’s a matter of context, I suppose. Humans are so very different from me.”
Sonni struggled not to imagine what hovered over her, mere inches on the other side of the webbing. She needed to keep cool, to try and reason with this entity. No matter how horrific it appeared, it was another intelligent being, which meant there was a chance…a chance…she might be able to establish some kind of rapport with it and get it to spare her.
There was hope.
But you ARE intelligent. Even if you are very different, you are another intelligent being like me.
“Yes. Although I’m not sure if ‘like me’ really applies. It’s very hard to explain. I get all my language from you, and the others, but none of you have had words for some of this.”
Sonni took a deep breath, at least as deep as her current circumstances allowed, and focused on conversation. It helped to steady her nerves, and oddly enough the ‘voice’ of the suburban housewife used by the monster helped calm her as well.
No…not monster. Don’t even think of it as such. It was a fellow sentient being. Focus on that.
If I were to picture something in my mind, could you see the picture I make?
“Yes, although I’m afraid most of you don’t picture things anywhere near as completely as you think you do. Most of the time, what you call pictures are impressions. Still, I can do this. Actually, I can see out of your eyes while you’re using them if I so choose.”
Amazing!
“It is? Interesting. I seldom do it because your eyes are so different from mine. It’s an effort on my part to adjust to what you are seeing. For instance, you only have two of them and you see colors differently.”
Okay, good. The “entity” was talking about itself. That was one of the first steps to bridge-building.
Yes. I suppose being different makes understanding difficult. You must be brilliant to grasp as much as you do.
“No. I don’t think so. I do not produce light.”
Brilliant is also a way of saying very, very intelligent.
“Oh. I’m afraid language is something I am still becoming used to. As I gather more faces I will become more fluent. Having different minds to compare helps me gain meaning where only having one still left me mostly confused.”
More faces? Having different minds? What the hell? Was it schizophrenic?
I don’t understand. You have more than one mind?
“Yes. But not in the way you are thinking. This gets hard to explain, but I shall try. When I eat prey, I don’t always simply devour their body. If I choose to, I can take my time and consume their ‘mind’ as well. Their memories, their knowledge, their entire perception of things. I don’t necessarily understand it all, or even most of it, but I can study it at my leisure. And if I want, I can slip into that mind and wear it as a face.”
Sonni fought down the urge to vomit. This was a nightmare. This creature was even more alien than it looked. But everything depended on her remaining calm, and building a rapport with it. Besides, confined as she was, throwing up could be lethal.
Wear it as a face?
“Yes. Like on the sandbar. The woman you saw was named Karen Sellars. She was the first human I fully devoured. That is probably why I usually wear her face. It took me months of study to make enough sense of her to be able to talk. Therefore, it’s the one I know best. But I do have others.”
The voice changed. It became male, with a quality suggesting advanced age.
“This one is named Curtis Morlin. He is very different than Karen Sellars, with a great deal more memories and experiences. I still don’t understand most of them, but he was once a thing called a ‘soldier’ in a faraway place, and he has knowledge I have found very useful.”
Useful?
“Yes. I have enemies. People who want to kill me. You met one of them. But I’m too strong for most of them. And now I’m using ‘strategy’ to avoid them as well. I’m doing things different than one of my kind normally would. Avoiding things my kind would normally do. And soon I’m going to ‘turn the tables’ on them. You see? I can learn figures of speech.”
Enemies? Maybe she could use that. Things with enemies might welcome allies. Hell, if it kept her alive, she would help this thing take over the world just like in a bad B movie.
“You are going to help me. You are going to be a very big help. It’s another one of those ways I’m doing something different.”
Sonni shriveled inside, realizing this thing had been reading both her motives and the thoughts she had been sending its way. Still, her captor didn’t seem angry so maybe there was still a chance they could be friends.
How will I be helping you? What do you want me to do?
“Oh, you don’t have to do anything. It’s already been done.”
I don’t understand. But I’m glad to help.
“It comes back to doing things differently. And imagination. You see, when the spiderlings in an egg sac hatch, a great number tend to eat each other and only a fraction of the original number continue out into the world.”
Egg sac!
“But I’m going to change those odds. When the one I’ve put into the cocoon with you hatches, they will have a food source right at hand.”
!!!!!!!
“So a far greater number of my children should survive than under normal circumstances. My progeny should easily outnumber those of my rival.”
Sonni fought against the cocoon, her mind now one long, continuous scream. The horror she had been wrapped around felt alive…almost throbbing with evil.
“Then I will launch a counter attack they won’t see coming. A full-scale war. It’s the very last thing they will be expecting.”
The woman writhed and gasped in her silk coffin, but to no avail. She felt something brush her prison, and knew the monster was now all around her.
“I can feel them beginning to awaken inside now. But it will be a day or two until they hatch from the egg sac itself, and I have really enjoyed talking with you. It’s interesting and most informative. So until then….let’s be friends.”
###
Billy sensed he wasn’t alone before he opened his eyes.
His back hurt. His arm hurt. Hell, all of him pretty much hurt. The feeling in his legs was a bit iffy, but Grandma Lilah said it would pass. Add all that to the fact this was the first sleep he’d had in three days, and he knew damn well something must have changed to have woken him up.
A quick probe of the room produced nothing, but that told him volumes. Sunspinner hung in her frame nearby, and a quick check with her confirmed his suspicions. His visitor had come through his bedroom window.
“Maggie?” he groaned.
He opened his own eyes to see she squatted against the wall across from his bed.
She still wore the damaged clothes from the night before. Dried blood covered half her face, and her arm was badly scabbed as well. Her crudely shorn hair stuck out in several directions, matted with blood and a few leaves she must have picked up sneaking through the woods to get here. But it was the look in her eyes that made him wince. She looked lost, trapped, half wild, and very far away.
“Hey, Maggie,” he whispered. “Tell me I didn’t do any of that damage.”
This time his voice seemed to bring her out of her reverie, although she still stared at a point somewhere in space.
“Billy,” she answered in a vague tone, “you are the worst shot in Cole County. I think you even managed to miss the wall behind me.”
“Good. I wanted to miss anyway.”
Maggie didn’t reply. She simply squatted there against the wall, now looking at him.
He reached out with his spirit, hunting any sign of hers, but there was nothing. She had shut herself in so tight only his eyes told him she remained in the room. The spiritual strength it took to do something like this was astounding. But what concerned him was the state of mind it took to maintain it. Any probing on his part was going to have to be with words.
“So…you gonna let Grandma Lilah take care of that, or are you just gonna walk around scaring kids?”
“It’s nothing. Just nicks and scrapes. My skin is pretty tough.”
Billy gave her a weak grin.
“Is there any part of you that ain’t?”
This didn’t get the hoped for response either. She went back to staring at the invisible point in space.
Being a telepath, Billy found sharing a room with a person his most important sense told him wasn’t even there rather disconcerting. Maggie’s appearance didn’t help matters either. It felt like being alone with a ghost.
“Are you afraid of me, Billy?”
Billy closed his eyes for a second with another groan. He was tired, and not guarding his thoughts like he should. Oh well, he would have to take that one head on then…
“You’re scaring the hell out of me right now.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then, no,” he met her odd gaze with a firm one of his own, “I’m not afraid of you. We are blood and spirit. Being afraid of you would make as much sense as being afraid of my own right hand.”
“Your ‘right hand’ damn near killed you last night.”
“That was my fault. I was interfering with Molly and she was already confused when the explosion happened and you got hurt.” Then he remembered the laws regarding companions. The serious one he violated, and then the far graver one broken afterwards. “Oh, my God! Molly! You have to explain what I did to the Elders! I was the one breaking the law that caused it to happen! You have to tell them, Maggie! I’ll back you up. I’ll admit it!”
“No.” She stood up and walked over to his bed. “I will not. And neither will you. Besides, they have already passed their judgment.”
Billy quailed at the thought. Only twice before in the past few centuries had somebody’s companion attacked another member of the People. In both cases the tribal member was restrained and forced to watch his companion killed…swarmed by the companions of the others.
“Oh, god…Molly…”
“… has been sentenced to die,” the woman finished. “The law is clear. But I have been ordered to bring her forward for it, and until I do I am to be shunned.”
“What the hell?”
“They are only being practical,” a tone of bitter amusement briefly entered her voice. Then it became flat and authoritative. “And you will be practical, too…and shut up. They might rule your actions as justified, but they are in a strange mood and might not either. This really doesn’t change things very much anyway.”
Billy looked up at her in disbelief. For a spirit-singer, to be shunned like this was, in its own way, as bad a punishment as the execution of his or her companion. Her world would go quiet. Nobody in the tribe would acknowledge or have any dealings with her, she would be evicted from her home, and since her companion could not survive long outside their territory, she was effectively trapped…living the life of an animal in her own land.
It was generally only imposed for a limited period of time, for serious social offenses…like interfering with another’s companion.
“Maggie…” he grunted as he tried to find the strength to push himself up on his elbows. He might have succeeded but she placed a hand on his chest and firmly kept him in place.
“No, it’s done. I started this. I brought this on myself.”
“No you didn’t! Not the way you mean it!”
“It doesn’t matter. The only reason I came here was to say my piece before you heard it from somebody else.” She held up a hand to ward off interruption. “Billy, I damn near got you killed. That’s on me. I made myself hate the outsider over Dad because I didn’t want to deal with where the blame really fell, and it was making me crazy. And because I wouldn’t be honest with myself, my confusion bled over into Molly and she didn’t know who the enemy really was when the shit hit the fan. That’s my fault, and I came here to apologize for it on my own so you know I really mean it, not just because the Elders say I should. I owe you a great debt. I promise, I’ll find a way to make things right with you, too.”
“Fine! You want to fix things with me? Then give me another day to get better and I’ll give you a gigantic kick in the ass for it! Maybe two, for screwing up my movie…if I’m feeling brave and haven’t already started running…but I can’t do it if you’re grieving over Molly or you’re shunned forever! You have to tell the Elders the whole story so they will get this right!”
“No.” She leaned close and looked him in the eyes. Her own burned bright, as if with fever. “I will handle this my way. I will make this right myself.”
“How?” he whispered. “How can you possibly do that?”
&nb
sp; She told him.
Billy closed his eyes in dismay.
This kept getting worse and worse.
“I’ve got to go, Billy. They’ll be coming to check on you shortly.”
“Maggie, don’t do this. You’re hurt, and you won’t have any backup. There’s got to be another way.”
“There is no other way. This is the only way I can make it right and save Molly, too. But you can’t tell them. Understand? Can I count on you?”
“Maggie…”
Maggie strode over to the window and paused in the act of crawling out. Between the dried blood, wild eyes, haggard face, and leaf-littered hair, she looked like some maniacal wood spirit.
“Billy? Can I count on you?”
Billy sighed and nodded. It wasn’t like there was much he could do about it anyway. At least not right now. Apparently everybody older than him had just lost their minds.
“Okay, Maggie. You win. You be careful out there.”
“Thanks.” She gave him a strange look that didn’t do a damn thing to make him feel better about any of this. “Now get some sleep. This will all be over in a few days anyway.”
That was exactly what he was afraid of.
But Billy guarded the thought as he watched her disappear out the window.
Then he closed his eyes with another groan. It was all too much. He was so tired. And it felt like he had woken up into a nightmare world with only a passing resemblance to the one of yesterday.
Beside him, Sunspinner fidgeted in her frame as a result of his own turmoil.
He reached out and touched spirits with her—enhancing his powers and her intellect—then sent soothing waves of calm in her direction. The big spider quieted immediately, sharing his normally easy going disposition. She sent back an image of sunning on a pasture fence at their favorite spot while he daydreamed nearby….a pastime they both enjoyed.
“Soon, girl,” he reassured her. “Maybe tomorrow if it’s warm. But right now, Billy needs a nap. A good long one. Being the last sane person in the galaxy is hard work.”
###
“Have you two lost your minds!?”
Spiderstalk Page 38
