by Neil Gaiman
She was saying, “I dunno. I thought it would be a holiday, but seeing those kids, without anything, it breaks your heart. There’s so much they need.” And then, while Spider was trying to assess the significance of this, she said, “I wonder how much longer she’s going to be in the bath. Good thing you’ve got plenty of hot water here.”
Spider wondered if Rosie’s words were meant to be important, whether they held the key to escaping from his predicament. He doubted it. Still, he listened harder, wondering whether the wind would carry any more words between the worlds. Apart from the crash of the waves on breakers behind and far below him, he heard nothing, only silence. But a specific kind of silence. There are, as Fat Charlie once imagined, many kinds of silences. Graves have their own silence, space has its silence, mountaintops have theirs. This was a hunting silence. It was a stalking silence. In this silence something moved on velvet-soft pads, with muscles like steel springs coiled beneath soft fur; something the color of shadows in the long grass; something that would ensure that you heard nothing it did not wish you to hear. It was a silence that was moving from side to side in front of him, slowly and relentlessly, and with every arc it was getting closer.
Spider heard that in the silence, and the hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. He spat blood onto the dust by his face, and he waited.
IN HIS HOUSE ON THE CLIFF TOP, GRAHAME COATS PACED BACK and forth. He walked from his bedroom to the study, then down the stairs to the kitchen and back up to the library and from there back to his bedroom again. He was angry with himself: how could he have been so stupid as to assume that Rosie’s visit was a coincidence?
He had realized it when the buzzer had sounded and he had looked into the closed-circuit TV screen at Fat Charlie’s inane face. There was no mistaking it. It was a conspiracy.
He had imitated the action of a tiger, and climbed into the car, certain of an easy hit-and-run: if they found a mangled bicycle rider, people would blame it on a minibus. Unfortunately, he had not counted on Fat Charlie’s cycling so close to the road’s drop-off: Grahame Coats had been unwilling to push his car any closer to the edge of the road, and now he was regretting it. No, Fat Charlie had sent in the women in the meat locker; they were his spies. They had infiltrated Grahame Coats’s house. He was lucky that he had tumbled their scheme. He had known there was something wrong about them.
As he thought of the women, he realized that he had not fed them yet. He ought to give them something to eat. And a bucket. They would probably need a bucket after twenty-four hours. Nobody could say that he was an animal.
He had bought a handgun in Williamstown, the previous week. You could buy guns pretty easily on Saint Andrews, it was that sort of island. Most people didn’t bother with buying guns though, it was that sort of island too. He took the gun from his bedside drawer and went down to the kitchen. He took a plastic bucket from under the sink, tossed several tomatoes, a raw yam, a half-eaten lump of cheddar cheese, and a carton of orange juice into it. Then, pleased with himself for thinking of it, he fetched a toilet roll.
He went down to the wine cellar. There was no noise from inside the meat locker.
“I’ve got a gun,” he said. “And I’m not afraid to use it. I’m going to open the door now. Please go over to the far wall, turn around, and put your hands against it. I’ve brought food. Cooperate and you will both be released unharmed. Cooperate and nobody gets hurt. That means,” he said, delighted to find himself able to deploy an entire battalion of clichés hitherto off-limits, “no funny business.”
He turned on the lights inside the room, then pulled the bolts. The walls of the room were rock and brick. Rusting chains hung from hooks in the ceiling.
They were against the far wall. Rosie looked at the rock. Her mother stared over her shoulder at him like a trapped rat, furious and filled with hate.
Grahame Coats put down the bucket; he did not put down the gun. “Lovely grub,” he said. “And, better late than never, a bucket. I see you’ve been using the corner. There’s toilet paper, too. Don’t ever say I didn’t do anything for you.”
“You’re going to kill us,” said Rosie. “Aren’t you?”
“Don’t antagonize him, you stupid girl,” spat her mother. Then, assuming a smile of sorts, she said, “We’re grateful for the food.”
“Of course I’m not going to kill you,” said Grahame Coats. It was only as he heard the words coming out of his mouth that he admitted to himself that, yes, of course he was going to have to kill them. What other option did he have? “You didn’t tell me that Fat Charlie sent you here.”
Rosie said, “We came on a cruise ship. This evening we’re meant to be in Barbados for the fish fry. Fat Charlie’s in England. I don’t even think he knows where we’ve gone. I didn’t tell him.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” said Grahame Coats. “I’ve got the gun.”
He pushed the door closed and bolted it. Through the door he could hear Rosie’s mother saying, “The animal. Why didn’t you ask him about the animal?”
“Because you’re just imagining it, Mum. I keep telling you. There isn’t an animal in here. Anyway, he’s nuts. He’d probably just agree with you. He probably sees invisible tigers himself.”
Stung by this, Grahame Coats turned off their lights. He pulled out a bottle of red wine and went upstairs, slamming the cellar door behind him.
In the darkness beneath the house, Rosie broke the lump of cheese into four bits and ate one as slowly as she could.
“What did he mean about Fat Charlie?” she asked her mother after the cheese had dissolved in her mouth.
“Your bloody Fat Charlie. I don’t want to know about Fat Charlie,” said her mother. “He’s the reason that we’re down here.”
“No, we’re here because that Coats man is a total nutjob. A nutter with a gun. It’s not Fat Charlie’s fault.” She had tried not to let herself think about Fat Charlie, because thinking about Fat Charlie meant that she inevitably found herself thinking about Spider…
“It’s back,” said her mother. “The animal is back. I heard it. I can smell it.”
“Yes Mum,” said Rosie. She sat on the concrete floor of the meat cellar and thought about Spider. She missed him. When Grahame Coats saw reason and let them go, she’d try to locate Spider, she decided. Find out if there was room for a new beginning. She knew it was only a silly daydream, but it was a good dream, and it comforted her.
She wondered if Grahame Coats would kill them tomorrow.
A CANDLE FLAME’S THICKNESS AWAY, SPIDER WAS STAKED out for the beast.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was low behind him.
Spider was pushing at something with his nose and lips: it had been dry earth, before his spit and blood had soaked into it. Now it was a ball of mud, a rough marble of reddish clay. He had pushed it into a shape that was more or less spherical. Now he flicked at it, getting his nose underneath it and then jerking his head up. Nothing happened, as nothing had happened the previous how-many times. Twenty? A hundred? He wasn’t keeping count. He simply kept on. He pushed his face further into the dirt, pushed his nose further under the ball of clay, jerked his head up and forward…
Nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen.
He needed another approach.
He closed his lips on the ball, closed them around it. He breathed in through his nose, as deeply as he could. Then he expelled the air through his mouth. The ball popped from his lips, with a pop like a champagne cork, and landed about eighteen inches away.
Now he twisted his right hand. It was bound at the wrist, with the rope pulling it tightly toward the stake. He pulled the hand back, bent it around. His fingers reached for the lump of bloody mud, and they fell short.
It was so near…
Spider took another deep breath but choked on the dry dust and began to cough. He tried again, twisting his head over to one side to fill his lungs. Then he rolled over and began to blow, in the direction of the ball, f
orcing the air from his lungs as hard as he could.
The clay ball rolled—less than an inch, but it was enough. He stretched, and now he was holding the clay in his fingers. He began to pinch the clay between finger and thumb, then turning it and doing it again, Eight times.
He repeated the process once more, this time squeezing the pinched clay a little tighter. One of the pinches fell off onto the dirt, but the others held. He had something in his hand that looked like a small ball with seven points coming out of it, like a child’s model of the sun.
He looked at it with pride: given the circumstances, he felt as proud of it as anything a child has ever brought home from school.
The word, that would be the hardest part. Making a spider, or something quite like it, from blood and spit and clay, that was easy. Gods, even minor mischief gods like Spider, know how to do that. But the final part of Making was going to prove the hardest. You need a word to give something life. You need to name it.
He opened his mouth. “Hrrurrrurrr,” he said, with his tongueless mouth.
Nothing happened.
He tried again. “Hrrurrurr!” The clay sat, a dead lump in his hand.
His face fell back into the dirt. He was exhausted. Every movement tore the scabs on his face and chest. They oozed and burned and—worse—itched. Think! he told himself. There had to be a way of doing this… To talk without his tongue…
His lips still had a layer of clay on them. He sucked at them, moistening as well as he could, without a tongue.
He took a deep breath, and let the air push through his lips, controlling it as best he could, saying a word with such certainty that not even the universe could argue with him: he described the thing on his hand, and he said his own name, which was the best magic he knew: “hhssspphhhrrriiivver.”
And on his hand, where the lump of bloody mud had been, sat a fat spider, the color of red clay, with seven spindly legs.
Help me, thought Spider. Get help.
The spider stared at him, its eyes gleaming in the sunlight. Then it dropped from his hand to the earth, and it proceeded to make its lopsided way into the grass, its gait wobbly and uneven.
Spider watched it until it was out of sight. Then he lowered his head into the dirt, and he closed his eyes.
The wind changed then, and he smelled the ammoniac scent of male cat on the air. It had marked its territory…
High in the air, Spider could hear birds caw in triumph.
FAT CHARLIE’S STOMACH GROWLED. IF HE HAD HAD ANY SUPERFLUOUS money he would have gone somewhere for dinner, just to get away from his hotel, but he was, as near as dammit, now quite broke, and evening meals were included in the cost of the room, so as soon as it turned seven, he went down to the restaurant.
The maître d‘ had a glorious smile, and she told him that they would open the restaurant in just a few more minutes. They had to give the band time to finish setting up. Then she looked at him. Fat Charlie was beginning to know that look.
“Are you…?” she began.
“Yes,” he said, resigned. “I’ve even got it with me.” He took the lime out of his pocket and showed it to her.
“Very nice,” she said. “That’s definitely a lime you’ve got there. I was going to say, are you going to want the à la carte menu or would you rather do the buffet?”
“Buffet,” said Fat Charlie. The buffet was free. He stood in the hall outside the restaurant holding his lime.
“Just wait a moment,” said the maître d‘.
A small woman came down the corridor from behind Fat Charlie. She smiled at the maître d‘ and said, “Is the restaurant open yet? I’m completely starved.”
There was a final thrum-thung-thdum from the bass guitar and a plunk from the electric piano. The band put down their instruments and waved at the maître d‘. “It’s open,” she said. “Come in.”
The small woman stared at Fat Charlie with an expression of wary surprise. “Hello Fat Charlie,” she said. “What’s the lime for?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well,” said Daisy. “We’ve got the whole of dinnertime ahead of us. Why don’t you tell me all about it?”
ROSIE WONDERED WHETHER MADNESS COULD BE CONTAGIOUS. In the blind darkness beneath the house on the cliff, she had felt something brush past her. Something soft and lithe. Something huge. Something that growled, softly, as it circled them.
“Did you hear that too?” she said.
“Of course I heard it, you stupid girl,” said her mother. Then she said, “Is there any orange juice left?”
Rosie fumbled in the darkness for the juice carton, passed it to her mother. She heard the sound of drinking, then her mother said, “The animal will not be the one that kills us. He will.”
“Grahame Coats. Yes.”
“He’s a bad man. There is something riding him, like a horse, but he would be a bad horse, and he is a bad man.”
Rosie reached out and held her mother’s bony hand in her own. She didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything much to say.
“You know,” said her mother, after a while, “I’m very proud of you. You were a good daughter.”
“Oh,” said Rosie. The idea of not being a disappointment to her mother was a new one, and something about which she was not sure she how she felt.
“Maybe you should have married Fat Charlie,” said her mother. “Then we wouldn’t be here.”
“No,” said Rosie. “I should never have married Fat Charlie. I don’t love Fat Charlie. So you weren’t entirely wrong.”
They heard a door slam upstairs.
“He’s gone out,” said Rosie. “Quick. While he’s out. Dig a tunnel.” First she began to giggle, and then she began to cry.
FAT CHARLIE WAS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT DAISY WAS doing on the island. Daisy was trying, equally as hard, to understand what Fat Charlie was doing on the island. Neither of them was having much success. A singer in a long, red, slinky dress, who was too good for a little hotel restaurant’s Friday Night Fun, was up on the little dais at the end of the room singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”
Daisy said, “You’re looking for the lady who lived next door when you were a little boy, because she may be able to help you find your brother.”
“I was given a feather. If she’s still got it, I may be able to exchange it for my brother. It’s worth a try.”
She blinked slowly, thoughtfully, entirely unimpressed, and picked at her salad.
Fat Charlie said, “Well, you’re here because you think that Grahame Coats came here after he killed Maeve Livingstone. But you’re not here as a cop. You just powered in under your own steam on the off-chance that he’s here. And if he is here, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”
Daisy licked a fleck of tomato seed from the corner of her lips, and looked uncomfortable. “I’m not here as a police officer,” she said. “I’m here as a tourist.”
“But you just walked off the job and came here after him. They could probably send you to prison for that, or something.”
“Then,” she said, drily, “it’s a good thing that Saint Andrews doesn’t have any extradition treaties, isn’t it?”
Under his breath Fat Charlie said, “Oh God.”
The reason Fat Charlie said “Oh God,” was because the singer had left the stage and was now starting to walk around the restaurant with a radio microphone. Right now, she was asking two German tourists where they were from.
“Why would he come here?” asked Fat Charlie.
“Confidential banking. Cheap property. No extradition treaties. Maybe he really likes citrus fruit.”
“I spent two years terrified of that man,” said Fat Charlie. “I’m going to get some more of that fish-and-green-banana thing. You coming?”
“I’m fine,” said Daisy. “I want to leave room for dessert.”
Fat Charlie walked over to the buffet, going the long way around to avoid catching the singer’s eye. She was very beautiful, and
her red sequined dress caught the light and glittered as she moved. She was better than the band. He wished she’d go back onto the little stage and keep singing her standards—he had enjoyed her “Night and Day” and a peculiarly soulful “Spoonful of Sugar”—and stop interacting with the diners. Or at least, stop talking to people on his side of the room.
He piled his plate high with more of the things he had liked the first time. The thing about bicycling around the island, he thought, was that it gave you an appetite.
When he returned to his table, Grahame Coats, with something vaguely beardish growing on the lower part of his face, was sitting next to Daisy, and he was grinning like a weasel on speed. “Fat Charlie,” said Grahame Coats, and he chuckled uncomfortably. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? I come looking for you here, for a little tête-à-tête, and what do I find as a bonus? This glamorous little police officer. Please, sit down over there and try not to make a scene.”
Fat Charlie stood like a waxwork.
“Sit down,” repeated Grahame Coats. “I have a gun pressed against Miss Day’s stomach.”
Daisy looked at Fat Charlie imploringly, and she nodded. Her hands were on the tablecloth, pressed flat.
Fat Charlie sat down.
“Hands where I can see them. Spread them on the table, just like hers.”
Fat Charlie obeyed.
Grahame Coats sniffed. “I always knew you were an undercover cop, Nancy,” he said. “An agent provocateur, eh? You come into my offices, set me up, steal me blind.”
“I never—” said Fat Charlie, but he saw the look in Grahame Coats’s eyes and shut up.
“You thought you were so clever,” said Grahame Coats. “You all thought I’d fall for it. That was why you sent the other two in, wasn’t it? The two at the house? Did you think I’d believe they were really from the cruise ship? You have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on me, you know. Who else have you told? Who else knows?”
