Itsy-Bitsy Spider

by Dale Mayer

  Well, she’s definitely one of us then, Maddy said softly. We certainly collect the odd ducks.

  And the incredibly talented ones.

  Maddy stepped back. The spiders are doing for her something I can’t, she said. She’s in good hands at the moment.

  Okay, I’ll contact Kirk. He should have more information on what’s happening.

  Right, he contacted me regarding the patient being poisoned.

  He’s also involved in another way.

  What way is that?

  Stefan sighed. He’s the little boy’s father.

  *

  Kirk woke slowly. He didn’t know why he was so tired. It had taken him a long time to go to sleep, but he thought he’d slept well once he finally got there. When he woke, finding a stranger at the end of his bed, he bolted out of it, reaching for his holster that held his weapon. “Who the fuck are you?” he roared.

  “My name is Stefan,” the man in front of him said calmly. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I suggest you look closer.”

  Kirk tried to wipe away the cobwebs of sleep to deal with the fact a man stood in his bedroom. A man he’d heard of but hadn’t met. “Look closer at what?” he said.

  “At me.”

  Cautious, realizing the man had made no threatening moves toward him, even if he had somehow gotten into his bedroom, Kirk stepped forward, his gaze locking on the man’s features, then frowned. “What the hell?”

  “What do you see?” Stefan asked curiously.

  “The dresser in the mirror behind you.” He shook his head. “Am I still dreaming?”

  “You, who have spent years working with Queenie, are asking that? Have you not learned anything?”

  Kirk stiffened. “How do you know Queenie?”

  “I just came from her place,” Stefan said. “That’s why I’m here. You need to get over there right now.”

  Kirk was already pulling on his jeans from yesterday. He walked around Stefan, whose translucent body allowed him to see everything in the room through him. “Are you a ghost?” A lot of things in life had terrified him, but they were usually related to crazy men holding weapons on innocent women and children. He never imagined he’d have a ghost in his room.

  “No,” Stefan said. “I’m as alive as you and Queenie are.”

  “Is Queenie okay?” He pulled out a clean white T-shirt from his drawer, yanked it over his head, grabbed a pair of socks and tugged them on while he waited for this entity to answer.

  “No,” Stefan said thoughtfully. “Although she is healing now.”

  Kirk was in the process of grabbing his holster, putting it on. He spun and asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “She saw another vision. I was there too.”

  Kirk shook his head. “What are you talking about? How could you be there too? You mean, you both saw the same vision? I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “We both saw the same vision. But the only reason I saw her vision was because I had joined my energy to her.”

  Kirk couldn’t help himself from stiffening. That seems oddly intimate.

  “Oh, it’s intimate,” Stefan said, “but not on a sexual level.”

  Hating the heat of the flush that must be rising on his cheeks, and ignoring for the moment that this guy read his thoughts, Kirk shrugged it away. “And what was this vision about?”

  “Spiders,” Stefan said gently. “Lots and lots of spiders.”

  “She’s been completely obsessed with spiders lately,” Kirk snapped. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, prepare yourself for when you get there.”

  Kirk grabbed his wallet and keys. He stopped and turned back to Stefan. “Prepare myself for what? Just exactly what happened during this visit and this vision?” he asked.

  “If you give me two minutes, I’ll explain as best I can.”

  Stefan proceeded to fill his head with something he never even thought was possible. “Her son? Are you sure she said it was her son?”

  Stefan’s form nodded, bit of flashes happening at his every move.

  Kirk was fascinated. He’d never seen anything like this man in front of him or his abilities. “You know it’s not possible, right?” And then he thought about what he’d said. “Or maybe her son is a ghost? Because he’s dead. We all know that for sure.”

  Stefan smiled. “The longer I spend in this world, the more I realize I know nothing for sure.”

  “Are you saying her child is alive?” Kirk barked, his heart shaking at the thought. “It almost destroyed her to lose that little boy. We can’t fill her head with hope and have her lose him again.” Then he realized what he was saying. “And, if he is alive, I want to know what the hell happened …”

  “And again I can’t say anything for sure at this point,” Stefan said. “But, with the best of my ability, and hers, I’m going to say that little boy, whoever he is, is alive. Is he her son? I can’t say for sure.” Then he said, “And there’s one other thing you need to know.”

  Kirk headed to the front door. He’d heard enough. The thought of her being covered in spiders was enough to make his stomach churn. He had no problem with spiders, but he knew she was terrified of them. For all he knew, she was unconscious, in shock.

  “No, I said she’s fine. She’s not in shock. The spiders are helping her. What you cannot do is disturb her when you get there.”

  Kirk flung open the door and turned to look at him. “Then what the hell is it that you want me to do?”

  “Be there for her,” Stefan said quietly, following Kirk to the front door.

  It was so bizarre for Kirk to look at this man whose form seemed to be fading. The hallway and kitchen were coming through him stronger and stronger. “And why should I do that?”

  Stefan sighed. “It shouldn’t be me who tells you this. But I feel like I have no choice.”

  When he didn’t say anything else, Kirk shrugged and said, “So are you going to tell me? I have to get to Queenie.”

  “Yes, you do have to go to Queenie. You have to look after her. And you have to find that little boy,” Stefan ordered.

  “I’ll do my best obviously,” Kirk said. “But you haven’t said why?”

  “Because that little boy is wearing your face.” And, with that, Stefan disappeared.

  Chapter 13

  Sunday, Late Morning …

  Queenie watched the images float past her as if she were in some dream state. It wasn’t like the visions she normally had, not that much was normal about those either, but she didn’t recognize these pictures. They floated, not like a film, coming in order, but were bits and pieces popping in and out of her psyche.

  She couldn’t grasp much here, and the effort it took was so damn much. She just wanted to float, wanted to make it all go away. So much stress had been in her life, so much pain, that escaping felt perfect right now. If she was dying, she knew nobody would be around to stop her, and, if she was living, and going to stay alive, she’d wake up from this fugue at some point. Maybe. She sighed happily as pictures of her son, pulled from the deep recesses of her mind, drifted through her vision.

  And yet, pinkish-lavender–tinged energy flowed in and around the visions, bringing tears to her eyes. Reese? Could it be that the pinkish-lavender energy and this little boy were one and the same? She’d never been able to get the lavender energy to talk—was it too young? Too undeveloped?

  She should have asked Stefan. She desperately wanted the little boy to be hers, but she knew Reese was dead, … and she’d only had one child. It was all too possible that, being a strong psychic, she had picked up on the little boy’s energy. His pinkish-lavender energy. And that meant her dream of finding Reese would never come true. … Yet another mother was struggling with her loss of this little boy out there somewhere.

  Then a sad thought flitted through her mind. What if the little boy had been given up for adoption? What if his mother wasn’t alive anymore?

  Reese had been such a cut
e boy, so happy, so talented. … She couldn’t imagine not wanting him. But then she thought every mother would care this deeply. Every mother would have thought her child was the best, the most perfect. Of course they couldn’t all be perfect. But Queenie was damn sure her son was. She smiled at that, because, of course, Reese had cried at odd times, and she hadn’t always been able to sort out why.

  Sometimes he’d reach out, and, like a little zap of energy, that brought tears to her eyes as she realized the perfection she had created. She knew his father had played a major role in that creation, but he hadn’t known she was pregnant. … She should have told him. She had tried at one time. She had called him up, but a woman had answered. A woman who called Kirk darling. That had been enough for Queenie to hang up the phone and to sit, quaking, with a very rotund belly, realizing Kirk had moved on and most likely wouldn’t want a reminder of what they’d had together—and definitely not a child to support. She didn’t know how he felt about children. She couldn’t pull up a conversation on this topic from her brain. Had they ever had one?

  Their life together had been so busy, full of killers and horrible criminals. She’d been so proud of him when his own abilities had sparked. It happened that way. He’d been her ground, even though he hadn’t recognized his role.

  He had helped her find normalcy in an often ugly world.

  More pictures of Reese floated in her mind. Of Reese laughing, him in the bathtub, him in her arms. Cell phones had created a moment-by-moment, day-by-day history of her life with her son.

  More pinkish-lavender energy caressed her.

  Surely an answer was in here somewhere for her. With that came the name Stefan, and she slowly remembered the last time she’d spoken to him. And the spiders. She could feel her body tensing.

  A weird crawling sensation could be felt all over her skin, but, rather than terrifying her this time, she found a certain comfort in it. Almost like a blanket shifting. She sighed, a deep heavy breath that worked up from her toes past her knees, her hips and up through her chest, releasing through her throat. That exhalation of pain and frustration and anger was old energy, long-dead energy. Releasing it felt so good. She took several more long, slow deep breaths.

  “Just take it easy. Your body has been under a lot of stress. You need to wake up slowly.”

  She murmured in protest. She didn’t want to wake up. She knew that to return to awareness was to greet pain again, to greet loss, to face her grief, and she so didn’t want to do that. She deliberately floated toward the clouds, hoping for more fog, more quiet, and not that voice becoming more and more insistent.

  “But I want you to wake up,” the man said. “It’s not an option.”

  She could feel her body twitching in protest.

  “I don’t want you to move when you wake up. Open your eyes and just be still,” he urged.

  And she caught something odd in his tone. What was that? She slowly opened her eyes to see Kirk. He smiled down at her. “There you are. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  She gave him a small smile. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

  “Looking after you,” he said gently. “Stefan called me—or came to me. Whatever you want to call it.” There was a note of humor in his voice. “And what I found … Wow.”

  Her eyes drifted closed again, and she just lay peacefully. “What did you find?”

  “You.”

  “Who else would you expect to find here? It’s my place. If I’m still at home.”

  “You are, and it is your place,” he said. “But you remember all those spiders you kept seeing?”

  Her mind drifted from one spider image to the next, and she remembered a good half dozen were in her apartment. “Spiders,” she whispered. “Stefan wanted me to communicate with them, to find out why they were here.”

  “What did the spiders tell you?”

  Still floating gently, she thought about the spiders, their message and her vision. Just as she went to rise, he placed a hand on her forehead and held her firm down.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  Her eyes were open and locked on his face. “Reese. The spiders were talking about Reese.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure about that,” he said quietly. “But apparently you saw a vision of a little boy, correct?”

  She frowned, hating how the cobwebs in her brain wouldn’t go away, even now that she wanted them gone. “Yes. He was calling for his mommy.”

  “Right, and you took that to mean it was your lost son.”

  She studied his features, trying to pinpoint what was wrong with what he just said. “He wasn’t a ghost,” she said, thankfully latching on to that odd note. “The little boy wasn’t dead.”

  “So, if he wasn’t a ghost, then he wasn’t Reese, correct?”

  She closed her eyes again, hating that he pulled her back to the more-accepted reality that her son was dead. “He was talking to me through the spiders,” she said. “I remember he gave the spiders his blood to find his mother.”

  “I don’t know how any of this works,” Kirk said, his voice urgent, “but do you hear what you’re saying?”

  Gathering strength, she opened her eyes and said, “I’m saying the exact same thing I’ve been saying all these years. It’s possible my son is alive.” She glared at him. “If so, everybody else has been lying to me. That little boy has abilities like I have abilities. And he used them to communicate with spiders. And me.”

  Kirk sat back on his heels.

  She lay on the dilapidated couch in her living room, and he was crouched in front of her. Worry was on his face—and sadness.

  “And there’s something else about that little boy you haven’t told me, isn’t there?”

  Instantly she tried to retreat. “No. I don’t remember anything,” she said vaguely. But inside she wondered. Of course with Stefan involved, there was no way to keep Reese’s heritage a secret.

  “Who’s the father of your child?” Kirk asked boldly.

  “What difference does it make? You think he’s dead anyway.”

  “Unless the father missed an opportunity to know and to be there for his son,” Kirk said, his voice turning hard and accusing.

  Inside she groaned. This wasn’t how she wanted to tell him. And this wasn’t the time for a confrontation. But then there would never be a good time at this point. And she stayed silent, hoping he’d let it drop, yet knowing he wouldn’t. She waited, her heart sinking, knowing this day would always come. Just how sad that it was a day when Reese wasn’t here to be with them.

  “Who was Reese’s father?” Kirk repeated. But instead of accusing, he just sounded defeated. “It’s me, isn’t it?”

  She remained silent.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he cried out. “Why wasn’t I given a chance to know my son?”

  He got up, pacing the living room while she lay there, staring through her lashes at him. She didn’t have a good answer. She’d been petrified he’d take her son away from her. She knew in her heart of hearts he wasn’t that kind of man, but it had just been her and Reese for so long that she’d been terrified she’d lose him. And then, of course, she had … for a totally different reason. And the loss had crippled her as she’d known it would.

  “You know I would have loved him,” Kirk snapped. He squatted down in front of her, frustration all over his face. “I would have loved to have known him.”

  She opened her eyes. “I know,” she whispered. “You would have. And I did call. A woman answered the phone the one time I finally got up the courage to call you, and she called you darling. And the thought of how you’d feel if a child from a past relationship intruded into your current happiness, how you’d feel if you were caught up in child support for eighteen years …” She winced, then admitted, “And it gave me an excuse to keep Reese to myself. If you had someone already, you didn’t need him. But I did.”

  He shook his head in bewilderment. “I’m sorry, but your lack of a relationsh
ip or my temporary one have no bearing on me finding out I have a son. I would have loved to have known him. I would have helped you, so you didn’t have to be at the end of your wits, trying to make ends meet …”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. “You might have. And you might not have.” She took a deep breath, then another one, releasing all her pain, all her torment. “At the time I couldn’t deal with the thought you might take him away. You might have said I was an unfit mother. You’d hurled a few insults at me along those lines before you left. About me having a breakdown, that I needed help. If you thought I was pregnant and maybe your son would be in any danger, you would have done everything you could have to save him. And it would have killed me.”

  This time the silence was on his part. He sat down in front of her, his fingers reaching out and hesitantly stroking her cheeks. “Maybe,” he admitted. “You were in very rough shape then. I don’t think you understand how bad it was. You hadn’t eaten for days. You wouldn’t drink anything. You were a basket of nerves, so you couldn’t sleep, and you paced all night, and you cried all day. Dr. Hutchinson was really concerned. He spoke to me several times, even suggesting you might need to spend a few days in a special ward so you didn’t hurt yourself. What was I supposed to do? You wouldn’t let me get close. You were so racked with guilt because of the Handkerchief Killer case that you sent me away.”

  “That poor woman died because of me,” she said, her voice stronger. “How was I supposed to react? Just close the file and say, Oh, well, win some, lose some? You know I gave my all to every case. I still don’t understand how that went so wrong.”

  “No. Of course I didn’t expect that. But you grieve and then you move on. We couldn’t help her anymore. But there were other cases.”

  “I hit a wall,” she whispered. “I was of no value to you or the department at that point. I needed time to heal, time to regroup, time to rebuild my energy and my faith in humanity. I wasn’t given that.”