Red Web

by Ninie Hammon

  "And that is?"

  "Close your eyes. I want the grandeur to hit you all at once when you open them — just like it did the others."

  She turns her head, then glances back at him. His eyes aren't closed. They're open — wide open, in fact, and there's a strange expression on his face. He's looking — staring, really — at her hair, her ponytail. She opens the big door on the right and steps into the room still holding his arm.

  Even now, after all these months, she is stunned by the beauty of the room. The parquet floor, so shiny it reflects the sparkling light from the chandelier like a pool of still water. The chandelier still takes her breath away and she stares at it in awe. Thousands of shiny pieces of perfectly cut glass, each a prism, refracting the light, casting hundreds of thousands of rainbows into the air all around, a waterfall in brilliant color.

  On the far side of the room, the elevator carrying T.J. and Bailey is almost to the top. But … T.J. is not inside it. He has climbed out of it and now stands on top of the cage. Why on earth …?

  "My God!" Brice stammers and his whole body tenses. She looks up at him, but doesn't see stunned delight on his face. She sees horror.

  Then Melody was gone, blinked out like a snuffed candle. Bailey's vision dimmed, as the light in the room — so bright through Melody's eyes — became the putrid haze of red. She tried to cry out to Brice, to warn him, but she couldn't make a sound. T.J. yelled from above. He was on top of the elevator cage, and he called out, "Brice. Look out! She's—"

  In Bailey's swimming vision, what happened next seemed to crank down into slow motion. Melody's back hunched, her head drooped. She was holding onto Brice's right arm and she grabbed it with her other hand … and Shannuck broke his arm. Like it was a brittle stick. Just snapped it. Brice screamed in agony, staggered away, reaching for his gun with his other hand. But the holster was on his right side. The spider creature was on him instantly, grabbed his shoulders and threw him twenty feet, where he hit the floor on his back and slid across it. Brice fumbled for his gun with his left hand. Shannuck leapt across the distance between them — leapt in one jump — yanked the pistol out of Brice's holster and threw it away. Bailey could hear it clatter on the hardwood floor. Then Shannuck stood hulking over his prostrate form and Bailey knew the spider was going to kill him. Crush him, mutilate him just like the orderly, maybe tear his eyes out of their sockets.

  T.J. swung down off the top of the elevator and jumped into the cage through the open door, swinging it shut behind him and fastening the metal bar in place across it. He punched the green button, must have pulled the jammed rope free because the elevator began to move upward again.

  Shannuck never turned his head toward them, but Bailey knew the spider could see not only what was in front of him but what was on both sides as well. Stepping away from Brice, the human spider leaned over and scooped up a handful of creatures — bugs, roaches, spiders — off the floor and threw them into Brice's face.

  He batted at them with his left hand, his right useless, lying at an odd angle to his body. Then he screamed, a shrieking howl. He'd been bitten. He slapped at his face, tried to rise, screamed again. Shannuck lifted his head and made the sound, the horror noise that passed for laughter. He turned toward them then, just as the elevator clunked into place at the top of the shaft. T.J. shoved on the back panel of the cage. The panel swung out and T.J. grabbed her hand, yanking her forward toward an open corridor. He shoved Bailey in front of him, then paused for a heartbeat, looking back.

  Dobbs hung upside down from a human spiderweb. Brice writhed on the floor in agony.

  No one left behind. T.J. was a Marine.

  Turning to Bailey, he cried, "Run!"

  A short hallway.

  A door.

  Something that looked like rubber weather stripping was fitted all the way around the door, sealing the multi-legged horrors inside.

  Game over. They were trapped.

  T.J. grabbed the doorknob, turned it and pulled and the door opened. The seals slid along the floor with a rubber scrapping sound and sunlight blinded her. A fresh breeze ruffled her hair and she took great gulps of clean, pure late-afternoon air. The shock of the air and the light steadied her, washed away some of the dizziness, and her mind cleared.

  T.J. hauled her along beside him across a width of planking to a staircase. She grabbed the railing and with T.J.'s grip on her upper arm, the two of them ran down the stairs, crossed a landing, ran down another, longer set of steps.

  The wind was gusty with the smell of rain in it. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Another landing. Another set of steps, shorter this time. They passed through the roof of the surround-porch and down to the flagstones of the path leading away from the house toward an opening in a hedge.

  Bailey was gasping for breath but could feel her full senses returning with every intake of clean air.

  She and T.J. raced down the flagstones to a tall gate in the ornate metal fencing that ran from the staircase above, along the railing of the wraparound porch, across the path and ended in a tall hedge twenty feet ahead. T.J. was gasping, too, his face flushed dark. He was as fit as a man half his age, but she could see the blood vessels in his neck bulging, pulsing with every beat of his racing heart.

  T.J. turned the handle on the gate. It was locked.

  "If I boosted you up, could you climb over—?"

  But even as he suggested the idea, it was clear it wouldn't work. The thin metal struts of the fence were only about two inches apart and granted no purchase. The first cross bar, for a foothold or handholds, was eight feet off the ground. The fence was capped by a bar featuring ornate spikes each a foot tall, making the whole structure fifteen feet tall. Unclimbable even with a boost.

  "Only way out is through the maze. Her maze."

  Bailey remembered then. T.J. had told her the back yard of The Cedars was a gigantic hedge maze that reminded him of The Shining.

  They both heard it at the same time. Someone, something was coming down the stairs they'd just descended.

  T.J. grabbed her arm and shoved her in front of him down the flagstone path and through the opening in the hedge. The hedge itself was as impenetrable as a four-foot thick wall. It stood at the height of the fence — fifteen feet. Once through the opening, there were corridors leading left, right and straight ahead. T.J. turned right and ran down the corridor, dragging Bailey along beside him. Though still slightly unsteady, she was much more sure-footed than she'd been before. The drug in the sugar cube had apparently worn off. And the fresh air, the glorious fresh air …

  They got to the end of the corridor leading right from the maze opening and turned right, then left, then right again. Bailey was hopelessly confused and suspected that T.J. didn't know where he was going either, wasn't running to, just away, from the spider creature that surely now stalked the maze behind them.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Brice had never felt pain like he felt now in his right cheek. It was a searing, burning agony that took his breath away in its ferocity. The tortured nerves in his cheek screamed daggers into his whole face and it was all he could do to keep from wailing.

  What just happened?

  Melody had turned her head and he'd noticed her ponytail. Started to make some sort of mental connection … as she opened the door and the horrible stench …

  And then she broke his arm. Threw him across the room. Grabbed his gun. Dumped … bugs in his face. And was gone.

  What was this?

  Nothing made any sense at all and he couldn't concentrate, focus, with such agony in his face. A spider bite. A black widow? Maybe. He'd only caught a fleeting glimpse of black legs before it … his eye had almost instantly swollen shut. Another pain suddenly stabbed into his neck on the left side, but it was wasp-sting pain, bearable. His face, though …

  He ground his teeth hard, trying not to shriek.

  He'd been shot in the leg in Kosovo, suffered shrapnel wounds in Afghanistan and had been badly burned as a
volunteer fireman — a three-inch-wide swath of puckered tissue across the length of his lower back testified to the severity of the third-degree burn that required months of painful skin grafting to heal.

  But none of his previous wounds had been anything like this. The torment stole his breath, made it impossible to think. He had to think, had to figure out …

  He could feel things crawling on him. Bugs … he saw a roach. Certainly more spiders. More black widows! He had to get up off this floor. Couldn't just lie here and let … He couldn't stand another bite like this one!

  Horror gave him the strength to roll over on his side. The movement shot daggers of agony up from his hand to his shoulder when he moved the broken arm and he cried out then in spite of himself. He rose to his knees slowly, looked around, understood nothing about his surroundings. It was a monster room out of a horror movie made in hell.

  He didn't dare stand, knew he wouldn't be stable enough to remain on his feet, but kneeling like this he could dust the creatures away.

  Help. He had to summon help.

  Keying the shoulder mic was an awkward movement. It was on his left shoulder and he would ordinarily use his right hand, which now hung useless at his side. He lifted his left hand to the switch, tried to …

  A tarantula the size of a saucer skittered across the floor not a foot in front of him and his instinctive backward cringe threw him off balance and he tumbled down onto the floor again, banging his head painfully and landing on his broken arm. Lightning bolts of pain fired up the arm to his shoulder and down to his fingertips.

  You're going to die here.

  The thought materialized in his consciousness like an instant message on a cellphone screen.

  His muddled thinking … it was so hard to think with the pain shrieking in his face. He knew it was horribly swollen, could feel the tightened skin spreading. If his other eye swelled shut, he would be blind. He had to move now while he still could.

  Gritting his teeth against the agony, he rolled again onto his side, used his uninjured left hand to shove himself upward and made it back up to his knees. That's when he saw the silver thing hanging in the rigging.

  A man. Was that …?

  Dobbs?

  Was he hallucinating? Was it possible that was Dobbs hanging upside down from a rope around his legs, forty feet off the ballroom floor? Wrapped up in something shiny … Saran Wrap?

  Where was Bailey? T.J.? Were they hanging …?

  He looked around frantically, searching … oh, please, no.

  Another silver package, but small. Too small. And another. Smaller. Those couldn't have held Bailey or T.J.

  Those were children.

  Oh, God.

  What was this?

  How had Melody snapped his arm? And her face. That had to have been a hallucination. It couldn't have contorted like that, couldn't have changed—

  A bullet of pain shot into his ankle like a fiery arrow. Agony so intense he couldn't even shriek. He turned awkwardly, hammering his pants leg, screaming then, howling. Off balance, he tumbled onto his back, crying out with such force he was instantly hoarse.

  You're going to die here.

  He screamed and screamed and …

  Get a grip or you are going to die here!

  His left hand trembling, he reached up, used his chin to steady the shoulder mic and managed to push the button. Then he spoke a single phrase that would light the fuse of every police officer who heard it. Two words that would send any human being with a badge running through walls to respond.

  "Officer down!"

  That's what he tried to say. But his swollen lips — and swelling tongue! — garbled the words.

  Concentrating. Oh, God it hurt! His face, his ankle, his arm.

  You're going to die here.

  "Of-fi-cer down!" The words were barely intelligible. "Re-peat, of-fi-cer down! At The Cedars."

  Was there a response? He didn't know, wasn't even completely sure he had transmitted. His hearing was … was the swelling in his face affecting his hearing, too? His phone was in his pocket, but there was no way he could get it out or use it if he did.

  Something else bit him. But he was wrapped in cotton now. His face and ankle shrieking in agony, everything else … becoming numb. The sensation of creatures crawling on him faded. The world was graying out.

  He supposed he really was going to die here.

  Then the darkness took him.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  T.J. was panting, soaked in sweat, his black face flushed almost indigo.

  Bailey was gasping. Terror. Exertion. Spider venom.

  But T.J. no longer had to drag Bailey along beside him. The fresh air and movement had cleared her head — the effects of the drug were gone. Adrenaline had taken its place, granted her strength, erased her pain.

  When they got to an intersection of hedge passages that opened out in three directions, they paused and Bailey looked down. Fresh scuff marks in the dirt. They had already come this way!

  "Do you know where you're going?"

  "No."

  "Is there a way out, or just twists and turns that go nowhere?"

  "A way out.”

  "You sure?"

  "No."

  He dashed off down the corridor on the right with Bailey on his heels, made another right … and came up against a solid hedge. Dead end.

  He turned, froze and she read horror on his face. She heard a hissing sound behind her, saw that T.J. heard it, too, so it wasn't just in her mind.

  Please, no. Not in the spider's mind. If I have to die, not while I'm in there!

  But she didn't plunge out of reality into the insanity of the not-human.

  "I tear your head off!"

  The hoary voice came from behind and above her. She turned to see what had drained the color out of T.J.'s flushed face. Shannuck was on top of the hedge, perched fifteen feet above them. There was no way out of the dead-end corridor without passing beneath where the spider watched them with impossible eyes.

  It was a spider. A woman, yes, but even without the dangling legs and hairy belly of the spider suit, what crouched above them was a spider.

  "You die!"

  The spider hopped down from the top of the hedge, off a fifteen-foot hedge like stepping off a footstool, and landed in the dirt thirty feet from them, hunkered down there, coiled to pounce.

  T.J. moved in front of Bailey, between her and the spider. The gesture was touching. And futile. There was not a thing the man could do to protect her. Nothing any human could do. Shannuck was going to kill them. It would be over in seconds. Then he would kill Dobbs if he was still alive. And Brice, too, if the poisonous spiders hadn't already done the job for him.

  Bailey's fear began to morph into anger. Last-breath, death anger, a sudden, burning rage in her chest. She clenched her teeth, found her hands involuntarily balling into fists.

  "Call her," T.J. suddenly hissed over his shoulder. "Talk to her!"

  "Talk to—?"

  "The little girl!"

  It took a heartbeat or two before Bailey understood. Then she cried out, "Katydid!"

  The spider froze.

  "Are you there, honey? Can you hear me?"

  The spider remained as motionless as a statue. Bailey stepped slowly around T.J.

  "Katydid, I want to see you. Please come out and talk to me." She paused, trying to think what else— "You were afraid the glue holding up the sky would let go, remember, like the glue Daddy used on the horn of your unicorn. So you asked Mommy about it."

  Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then the change was like watching wax melt. The hunched form of the spider straightened. Arms and legs pulled back into their sockets. The face relaxed and features formed on it. Innocent features, somehow much younger than Melody McCallum. Achingly young.

  "Mommy called me Katydid," said the little girl dressed in black tights and a black turtleneck standing in the dirt in dusty satin ballet slippers — they were ballet slippers. Her v
oice was soft and musical, sounded like the ringing of tiny bells. From the same throat that had produced — don't go there! Her ponytail had come loose and when she shook her head, strands of her tangled hair fell into her eyes. "You're not my mommy."

  "No, I'm not, sweetheart, but you know me. Don't you?"

  Macy Cosgrove had recognized Bailey as a friend or she never would have gone running up the mountainside with her. Maybe—

  "Uh huh. I know you."

  Bailey had been there with Katydid, knew how terribly, terribly wounded she had been and somehow, on some level, Katydid understood that.

  The fingers of a fitful wind reached out from the approaching storm and harried small funnels of dust and leaves along the ground at the little girl's feet. She looked down at them. Then she saw them, registered and connected. Her head came up and her eyes caught Bailey's and lingered for a second before she looked around, turning her head in wonder.

  She took in a breath.

  "It smells … good."

  Bailey was the only person in all the world who understood how significant that simple statement was, the only one who knew the horror that had filled every breath this child had taken — hour after hour, day after day. Bailey knew because she'd been there, too, smelled it as Katydid had.

  "The roses … I like how they smell. So … sweet, almost like you can taste it."

  It took Bailey a moment to figure out what roses she meant. The ones around the front door of The Cedars. The ones Shannuck smelled with the hairs on his legs.

  But this little girl wasn't Shannuck. She wasn't a kidnapper, a murderer. How could she be held responsible for what the monster had done?

  The rain came then, only a few drops at first, each making a tiny meteor-crater circle in the dust around Katydid. She put out both hands, palms up to catch the raindrops, turned her face toward the sky and opened her mouth. A raindrop splatted on her nose and she giggled — a musical sound — and looked at Bailey. She was smiling.

  "It's nice here."