The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1)

by Bartholomew Lander

  “Yeah, I know that. But just to clarify, you did, in fact, go to this get-together of yours. Without even telling me.”

  His mind was spinning; he needed damage control. He licked his lips, eyes fixed on the turquoise bath mat that sat dead center of the garage. “I . . . Yes. Sometime.”

  “Sometime. You went to a family reunion sometime. And you expect me to believe that.”

  A flash of his own anger resurfaced. Who was she to doubt him? It wasn’t like she could possibly know the truth! She was the one being unreasonable! “I told you, I don’t remember! Why would I lie about something like that?”

  “Because you need some excuse to justify your baseless hostility. Why wouldn’t you lie about it?”

  He dared to meet her gaze again, barely resisting the chill from her eyes. “It’s not a lie!”

  “If it’s not a lie, prove it to me. Tell me something falsifiable. Tell me about his family.”

  He shuddered at the word, his resolve shaking. “His family?”

  “Mmhmm. If it was a family reunion, you must have met his family. Or was it one of those reunions where you just go out drinking with five-year-olds?”

  Nice fucking job, Ralph. Way to lay down the law. He wiped again at the sweat, but now it was running down the back of his neck. “It was . . . Just his immediate family?”

  “Surprise me, Ralph,” May said through her teeth.

  He shook, trying to remember. “Well. He had parents.”

  “Whoa, you’re really convincing me now. Give me names, or at least something better than he had parents.”

  His lips fumbled, and he very nearly spoke the name Golgotha. He stopped himself. He couldn’t speak it. She would never understand the significance of it. And if he spoke it aloud, he feared May would be swallowed up into the shadow of the Warren family’s curse. Once she got that name, she wouldn’t stop until she knew everything there was to know about it, about the Lunar Vigil. He licked his lips, searching for anything else. “He had an older sister, too,” he said at last. “I don’t remember her name.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh. And if I ask him he’ll confirm that, huh?”

  “I, probably, yeah. I mean, it’s true. But I wouldn’t put lying past his kind of—”

  Her calm demeanor vanished. “Oh, please! Either you’re lying about going to the reunion or you were lying when you went to it! I don’t want to hear that judgmental crap coming out of your mouth, Ralph! Even if you did go, you should be ashamed of yourself for being so ruthless toward a child! Who can hate a child who’s five years old? Or was this back when you hated our kids, too? Are you saying this is just a problem you have, where you can’t help hating anyone under a certain age? Answer me, Ralph, what’s the problem here?”

  He sputtered, unwilling to respond. Everything he said just dug his hole deeper. The will to argue drained from him, leaving a cold hollowness behind. Ashamed, he diverted his eyes.

  “That’s what I thought,” May said, the anger in her voice fading into a penetrating frigidity far more terrifying than her furious shrieks. “I guess there’s nothing else to say, then.” She turned around and resumed folding the pile of clothes. The hum of the washing machine punctuated the silence that unfolded.

  Ralph took a deep breath, trying to find his voice. “May, I—”

  “No. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I have nothing to say to you. Until you’re willing to give me a real reason why you don’t want him to stay. Family is family, Ralph. You should be thankful you still have any at all.”

  The washing machine droned on. The subtle shaking it sent into the floor made him seasick. Sweating, heart pounding, he hoped that words to defuse May’s anger would come to him. Half a minute later, he was no closer. He crept from the garage, wondering how much she knew about his trip to Arbordale.

  As Ralph retreated, May counted the steps leading to the door. She filed away his excuse and mentally underlined the one thing seemingly falsifiable about his testimony. Their guest had an older sister, it seemed. She made a note to ask him about it in the future to see just what kind of liar Ralph was. And then she would go from there.

  Spinneretta couldn’t sleep. Her head hurt, and every time she was about to slip away a fresh chorus of pounding drums erupted in her temples. She kept thinking about Mark, and the unanswered question of why he was there. The look of terror on her father’s face and the fact that Mark had apparently been away from home for years were enough fuel to keep her speculation engine turning for sleepless hours.

  She tossed herself onto her side for the fortieth time that night. 1:36, the clock on her nightstand read. She closed her eyes again and tried unsuccessfully to empty her head. The clock read 1:52 when she finally decided to get up. Some water would help clear her mind. Failing that, she could always go for a midnight run. Or maybe even a midnight snack of liquefied pork, if she were so desperate. She eased the door to her room open, so as not to disturb Arthr in the next room, and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

  After downing a full cup of tap water in a single go, she refilled the glass. She was on her way back to the stairs when a sliver of yellow light caught her eye through the darkness. The door to the study, where her mother had made accommodations for Mark to sleep, was cracked open. What’s he doing awake? she thought, her eyes transfixed on that splinter of light.

  She crept up to the door, terrified of making a sound that would alert him to her presence. She stopped five feet away and paused. With a deep breath she started moving again, growing slower with each step until she could peer through the gap into the study. There he sat, reclined in the luxurious chair beside the small couch. He was facing the door, his eyes glued to a book in his lap.

  A few moments passed, and Spinneretta’s heart beat faster. When the man did not stir from his reading, she had half a mind to return to her bedroom and forget the whole thing. But she couldn’t. Gathering what courage she had, she reached out and rapped on the door.

  Mark looked up from his book. “Yes?”

  Her courage was rapidly draining away, but Mark’s eyes were on her. If she ran now, it would just be weirder and more embarrassing later. She pushed the door open, flooding the hallway with light.

  “Good evening to you,” he said in a cheerful tone. “Can you not sleep?”

  Unable to think of anything else to say, she nodded. “Looks like I’m not the only one,” she said. He chuckled, a low but genuine sound. The sound relaxed her nerves a bit, and so she moved toward the sofa, hoping he would not mind her intrusion.

  “I do not sleep much,” he said. “What about yourself, Miss Spinneretta? What has you awake at the witching hour?” The last two words sent a chill up her spine.

  “Just a lot on my mind.” She plopped down onto the couch, and she noticed Mark wince a little as she did.

  “Does that not hurt?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He gestured at her with an open palm. “Your legs.”

  After a moment of confusion, she caught his meaning. “Oh, no, not at all. They’re tough as nails.” She flexed and stretched six of her extensions as if to illustrate the point. Even crushed between her slight body weight and the surface of the couch, they had no problem moving. The crackling of the couch’s texture sliding over her legs was oddly addictive, though she didn’t care for the way the hard chitin ground against her back.

  The entire situation felt surreal; she was flourishing her spider legs before a near-complete stranger who, despite the grotesque rarity of the display, showed not an iota of revulsion toward her. Only that same curiosity, detached from hardwired preconceptions of normality. His eyes were calm, somehow sincere. She should’ve been more cautious, but he’d clearly gotten used to the idea of spider-people already. Not much point in hiding them under my jacket now.

  Abruptly self-conscious, she cleared her throat. “Hey, I wanted to say sorry about earlier.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Hmm?”

  “For laughin
g at the whole family seat thing.” Just mentioning it brought back her earlier embarrassment. “That was kind of uncalled for.”

  Mark blinked at her for a moment and then shook his head. “You needn’t apologize. It’s nothing.”

  Her curiosity began to burn brighter, fueled by firewood cut from the missing family tree. “But, umm, about what you said. You said I wouldn’t have found the term odd if I knew much about the Warren family, right? What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant precisely what I said.”

  “Well, what about it?” A pause. “I have this report for school coming up. On family heritage and whatnot. So I thought maybe . . . ”

  He was unmoved by her project. “Perhaps you should ask your father instead of me.”

  “Well, Dad hasn’t told me anything about his side of the family, really.”

  A strange severity found its way to Mark’s pale irises. “There may be a good reason for that.”

  The abruptness of his response sent a twinge of fear running down her appendages. “What do you mean?”

  He sighed and closed the book in his lap. “Miss Spinneretta, I’m going to tell you something very important, something you would do well to remember.” His eyes found hers, and the hard shadows framing his face grew even deeper. “Never ask me a question unless you’re certain that you want to know the answer. I do not want to spread rumors that your father has intentionally spared you from.”

  Her spider legs tingled with palpable apprehension, and her curiosity about his mannerism grew deeper and ever more hopeless. She nodded slowly. “I’m certain I want to know. Besides, you’ve apparently taken up residence in my parlor, so the way I see it you owe me some answers.”

  He closed his eyes a moment, irritated at her disregard for his advice. It stung that he didn’t find her parlor joke funny, and she wondered if he had taken it seriously.

  “Very well.” He leaned back in the chair and allowed his features to relax a little. “I suppose it would not be fair to keep such a secret from you, Miss Spinneretta. First, tell me what you know about the Warren family. Anything at all.”

  She considered the question. “All I know is Dad had three siblings who died a long time ago. I think that makes him the last of his immediate family.”

  Mark nodded and exhaled. His eyes slid across the wall in the opposite direction for a few tense moments. “Then I shall start from the beginning. Our branch of the Warren family has long, ostensibly proud traditions dating back hundreds of years. Those traditions have their roots in the teachings of a man named Charles Edward Warren, the patriarch of the family, if you will. In short, he one day uncovered a pristine shard of crystal. When he looked into it, he saw his own reflection and went mad. Convinced he was chosen to purge the unworthy, he butchered his family, save his youngest son. He took the title Golgotha and traveled to the New World. There he founded a lineage devoted solely to the service of the Almighty.

  “That was many generations ago. And to be honest, I don’t know if it’s any more than a family legend. In any case, the terrible things that our line has done since then have all been committed in the name of Golgotha and the deity he served.” He leaned forward, intense eyes fixed on hers. “You wanted to know why I chose the phrase family seat. The reason is simply that the Warren clan was a very old and even deadlier cult.”

  Spinneretta shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, his words spinning through her thoughts. Trying to comprehend but making no specific efforts to believe, she could say nothing other than parroting the ultimate point of his explanation. “Our family is a cult?”

  “No. My family was a cult. Many branches of the Warren lineage split from the clan out of fear or disgust since we arrived. Based on my relationship with your grandfather, you and your family are eleven generations removed from the sins of the first Golgotha.”

  Under the circumstances, his words shouldn’t have made her feel much better. Still, a small weight lifted from her chest. At least no one in her recent family tree had committed any acts of wanton brutality in the service of . . . what exactly?

  But then something clicked deep in her mind. Her legs wrapped around her torso as the echo of a long-buried memory returned. There was no reason the mention of a cult of all things should have rung any bells, yet his ominous words seemed to resonate with something long forgotten.

  “Actually,” she said, “my dad did mention something about the family before. Once.”

  “Hmm? And what did he tell you?” Mark said, confused by the abrupt change in subject.

  “It was so long ago I forgot about it until now.” She began to shake her head, the memory suddenly all too clear in her mind’s eye. She must have been six at the time. She and Arthr had gotten into trouble and, in his anger, Ralph had grabbed them both and growled a warning to them—a warning about the fate that awaited disobedient children of the Warren line. “He once told me and Arthr,” she said, unable to suppress a shiver, “about the boogieman wizards of the Warren family. All I remember is him describing some sorcerers who reveled in human sacrifice.”

  Though the story had been terrifying to her six-year-old self, the years had devoured the threat. Her father never mentioned those boogiemen again, even when she misbehaved. But long after the disciplinary threat of the ghostly sorcerers and the so-called Weeping Man faded, the shadows on the wall remained, forever burned into her memory. How sad it was, she reflected, that all she’d ever heard of her father’s bloodline was a threat of punishment.

  But Mark’s eyes were cold. Seeing the lack of humor in them reignited the sense of impending doom she’d felt upon hearing the word cult. She gave him a nervous laugh. “I mean, I’m sure that’s all nonsense. But I can’t say he never talked about them, I guess. But if the Warrens are a cult, then it may have been true after all, huh?” She meant for it to be a joke, and went so far as to force a chuckle. It was a crazy idea, an imaginary correlation. And yet, why would her dad use the family name in relation to those imaginary evil spirits unless . . . The air of the study grew heavier, and Spinneretta swallowed hard. She immediately regretted saying anything.

  “I can’t deny that such things occurred,” Mark said.

  Her mouth fell open. “What, what does that mean?” He didn’t answer. Beginning to get cold feet, she jumped in headfirst and asked the follow-up question now weighing upon her mind, if only to clear the air of that dreadful pall. “And what about you?”

  “Neither can I can deny my involvement in some of the rites and rituals of the cult,” he said. His ambivalent gaze drifted away from her, drilling a hole into imaginary spacetime.

  The pit of her stomach iced over. It wasn’t his words, but the calm, factual tone with which he delivered them. By his own admission he was from a family of religious weirdos, and his involvement with them was apparently nothing out of the ordinary. He looked at her again. If his gaze had made her uncomfortable before, it now chilled her to the bone.

  Then, an odd smile broke across his face. “Do you believe in magic?”

  Numb and confused, she shook her head. “What? Of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s insane.” A vague terror coated her from head to toe to leg-tip.

  “You have spider legs on your back,” he said in a gentle tone, as though trying not to offend her. “Why is that normal but magic is insane?”

  “My legs are not normal, but at least they’re real. Besides, that has nothing to do with anything.”

  “It has everything to do with anything.”

  “So, what, are you trying to tell me there really are . . . ” It was almost too crazy to say aloud. “Are you one of those, quote, wizards?”

  He nodded, a grave expression on his face. “I was, in fact, regarded as a prodigy of the family. They used the term Chosen. I was born with a gift, if you will. Some of the cult priests spent their entire lives studying and practicing to perfect the rites and spells of the Vigil. While they spent days at a time praying
to receive the blessing of the Gate, that blessing was my birthright. The Gate was already open to me, they had said.”

  She didn’t know how much of his story she should believe. Though the idea of magic was objectively absurd, the apparent earnestness in his pale eyes made it difficult to discredit out of hand.

  “However,” Mark said, “though sacrifices were sometimes involved in the rituals, even at a young age I refused to kill any of them myself.”

  Spinneretta thought she heard remorse weighing his voice. Part of the fear in her gut melted away. Even if he’d been part of a cult, at least he had some sense of right and wrong that wasn’t completely screwed up. He may have been crazy enough to believe in magic, but if he was telling the truth about his family and upbringing then it wasn’t hard to see why he believed in such things.

  “As you might have gathered,” he continued, “my involvement with the cult was outside of my control. To them, I was no more than a means to an end. I had no interest in any of the Vigil’s activities. Even the gift of magic I’d been born with, that which the Warren clan needed and would have given anything to protect, bored me.”

  “Hold on. Magic bored you?” She tried not to laugh. “Alright, I figured it out. You’re making fun of me.” She at once felt a lot better about his dubious claims of culthood and sacrifice.

  But he gave his head a small shake. “I’m not.”

  “How can you say something like that with a straight face? Even if your so-called magic existed, how could you possibly be bored by it? That’s ridiculous!” Jesus, and here I was getting all freaked out about cults and shit.

  He shrugged. “To me, magic came as naturally as breathing, and represented only Golgotha’s rule. Now may be a different story, but before I departed that God-forsaken place there was only one time that I enjoyed using it.”

  Her spider legs curled around her chest, and she searched his face for some sign he was playing a joke on her. When she saw nothing, she leaned toward him, deciding to press the issue. “What did they believe in? The cult, I mean. And why did you leave?”