The White Widow's Revenge

by Jacob Grey

Wait! said Shimmer. What’s that?

  The crows stepped back.

  Caw peered in. “What?” he said. Despite everything, he dared to hope they’d made a mistake – that by some miracle Screech was still alive.

  But the body was completely still.

  In his talons, muttered Shimmer. He’s holding something.

  She nudged Screech’s balled claws with her beak, and Caw saw something white wriggle inside. A spindly leg poked out.

  “It’s a spider!” he said.

  The rest of the crows stalked menacingly.

  Kill it! said one.

  Let’s rip it to pieces, added another. One leg at a time.

  Caw put his hand over Screech’s body. “No one touches it.”

  He gently prised Screech’s talons apart, and the spider dropped on to the ground on its back. It was bone-white and Caw’s blood ran cold.

  It rolled over and began to scramble away.

  I want it! said a crow and stabbed with its beak.

  Caw brushed the crow aside. “I said leave it alone!”

  The spider didn’t seem sure which way to go as each time it darted one way a crow blocked its path.

  Why are you protecting it? said Shimmer.

  It poisoned Screech! said Krak. It’s a killer.

  The spider lifted its front legs and spread its fangs defiantly. It was bigger than the last time Caw had seen it, several weeks before, but he somehow knew it was the same one. It was the bone-white spider he’d first spotted in the graveyard where his parents were buried, outside Blackstone, not long after his fight with the Spinning Man in the Land of the Dead.

  The crows bustled, their eyes greedy and bright. Caw noticed an old plastic bottle lying on the rubbish heap nearby. He reached over, grabbed it and unscrewed the lid. Holding the open neck beside the spider, he used the lid to coax it inside.

  What are you doing? said Krak. That’s the enemy.

  Caw stood up, screwing on the lid and inspecting the spider now trapped in the bottle. It was Quaker who had first told him that unnaturally white creatures, like Caw’s old crow Milky, were those that had somehow come back from the Land of the Dead. Could this spider be one of those?

  The crows were watching him, and for the first time he felt a twinge of dislike in their black stares.

  “Take care of Screech,” he said, unable to keep an edge of anger from his voice.

  The crows shuffled around the dead body, and some of them placed their talons carefully on Screech’s wings, lifting him like coffin bearers. With a couple of flaps, the body was airborne, and the other crows followed in a tight formation.

  With Shimmer standing beside him, Caw watched them disappear into the clouds.

  He pushed away his grief. The time to mourn his friend properly would have to come later.

  “I need to speak to Quaker again,” he said. “If we hurry, we might catch him.”

  Shimmer cocked her head. You sure he’ll be happy to see you?

  Caw could only shrug. What choice did he have?

  Oh great! said Shimmer. Foxes.

  Caw saw them – a pair of russet shapes on the next roof over from Quaker’s place. He sensed the weariness in the crows’ wings as they banked, carrying him closer to the building. Whether it was because of the battle at the dump or the loss of so many, he couldn’t tell. They had obeyed him – flocking as normal to lift him skywards – but he wondered what they were thinking now. How far he could count on them to follow.

  They swooped over the skylight, and Caw caught the tiniest glimpse of a person in the room below. It was Johnny Fivetails, rifling through Quaker’s meagre possessions. So the good ferals had tracked Quaker down too. If they were here, it meant they were looking for Caw.

  What do we do? asked Shimmer.

  Caw wondered if Lydia was there, or even Pip.

  His thoughts brought back the painful memory of the confrontation at the car park. Lydia’s mother had sided with Johnny Fivetails, hadn’t she? They were old friends. They had history.

  Caw spotted a dead cat, lying against the side of the building, the white fur of its throat bloodied.

  Oh no … muttered Shimmer. You think a fox did that?

  “Or a coyote,” said Caw.

  Either way, Johnny and Velma Strickham clearly weren’t just paying Quaker a friendly visit.

  “They’ll try to take the Midnight Stone again,” said Caw.

  So where to? asked Shimmer.

  Caw’s head was spinning. He commanded his crows to take him to the only place he could think of.

  Blackstone Library was a shadow of its former self, its huge grand windows boarded up and the grass verges outside overgrown. Scraps of rubbish littered the steps and graffiti scrawls covered the walls. A ribbon of yellow crime-scene tape tangled in the branches of a young tree nearby. It was a reminder of the horror Caw had witnessed inside, only a few weeks ago.

  They landed at the side of the building, beside the steps that led down to the bathroom window. It was covered with boards, but Caw managed to tug them free. He climbed through and Shimmer followed.

  “No one will look for us here,” he said.

  It was cold inside the main hall and the only light came from a couple of grubby windows high up in the dome that topped the building. The shelves were almost empty. Only a few books remained, scattered across the floor among discarded paperwork. The whole place smelt musty and decayed.

  Caw hadn’t visited the library since the day he and Lydia had found Miss Wallace, the librarian, murdered by the Spinning Man’s thugs. She wasn’t a feral, she had played no part in their war – she was just a kind woman who had taken pity on Caw, lending him books and giving him the occasional cup of hot chocolate.

  Caw took off his jacket and emptied the pockets. He placed the spider bottle on a reading desk and then paused, staring around at the empty shelves. A pang of grief flooded his body. When Miss Wallace had been in charge, the library had been warm and cosy, hushed and peaceful, with everything in perfect order.

  But now she was dead. Another innocent victim who had suffered because of Caw.

  He had done this. Just like Screech. Just like Lydia’s dog Benjy, killed by one of Mamba’s snakes. Everywhere Caw went, death followed, and he just kept running away. He was no better than Quaker. No – he was worse. Quaker had no choice, but Caw did. The solution was staring him in the face. Corvus had tried to tell him, but as usual Caw had tried to avoid the truth.

  He looked at his hands, blue with cold and covered in throbbing spider bites. He flexed them, then let them curl into fists, squeezing so tight he felt the pulse of his blood right through to his fingertips. A throb of anger and hate.

  Time to take control.

  End this.

  “Corvus was right,” he said.

  Shimmer cocked her head. What do you mean?

  Caw took a deep breath. His chest felt warm, his skin on fire. “About the White Widow,” he said. “Enough is enough. She’s the spider feral now. That’s all that matters.”

  From the bottle, the trapped spider watched him with its white stare. And a thought hit Caw like a truck.

  Maybe it’s been watching me all along.

  He hesitated, frowning.

  What’s up? said Shimmer.

  Caw’s skin prickled as he began to piece it all together. Was that what the Spinning Man had meant in the psychiatric hospital? Caw had barely paid attention at the time, but it made sense.

  And what about when he had first seen the spider: in the graveyard, the day after he and Lydia had returned from the Land of the Dead. Caw had thought it was only the two of them who came back into the real world. But a small spider could easily have crept through as well.

  He’d never have noticed.

  That had to be it.

  Following him. All this time.

  At the Church of St Francis, where Crumb had lived. At my house. On the roof of Cynthia Davenport’s apartment …

  The spider watched
defiantly, its tiny body radiating malice that hit Caw in waves.

  Earth to Caw! said Shimmer.

  “Johnny Fivetails was right,” Caw muttered. “The Midnight Stone made Selina the way she is. When she was on the apartment roof, she was holding the Stone. But it wasn’t just any spider that touched her.” He pointed at the bottle. “It was that one. He’s inside it. The spirit of the Spinning Man.”

  Caw grabbed the bottle, his heart racing.

  Caw, wait! said Shimmer.

  “I should have listened to the crows,” Caw shouted, unscrewing the lid. “I should have let them kill you!”

  Caw tipped the bottle upside down and shook it hard. The spider dropped on to the floor. Caw lifted his boot and brought it down with a thud that echoed in the cavernous library.

  Well, that’s one way of dealing with it, said Shimmer.

  Caw’s rage began to subside, but he felt no satisfaction. He raised his foot to look at the broken body.

  It wasn’t there.

  “Where’s it—”

  He felt a stab of pain on his ankle.

  Where’s the spider? said Shimmer.

  Caw reeled as a wave of dizziness swept over him.

  Caw, stay still! said Shimmer.

  He saw a chair and stumbled towards it, but his feet seemed to belong to someone else and he couldn’t feel the floor beneath them any more. His legs folded and he fell to one knee.

  Caw? said Shimmer.

  “Help me,” mumbled Caw, and his fear spiked as he struggled to breathe. His throat was tight and burning. He clawed at his neck, feeling the pressure build in his chest.

  Am I having a heart attack?

  As Caw fell flat on his face, he saw Shimmer in front of him, flapping and squawking. “Help …” he croaked again.

  His fingers slid into the pouch round his neck and closed over the Midnight Stone. Then his vision darkened and the world shrank in.

  Everything went black.

  aw floated over Blackstone, at the mercy of the air currents. He was neither boy nor crow, but something more ephemeral; a spirit, maybe.

  He felt weightless as the currents carried him over the sinuous coils of the Blackwater river, high above the twinkling yellow lights of the highways. Up ahead, the windows of the financial district’s towers sparkled silver and black. There was movement on the roof of one of them. A helicopter rose with spinning blades into the sky. Crows circled – thousands of them. And among them he saw a boy in ripped black clothing, holding the Crow’s Beak and standing over the fallen Mother of Flies. A girl crouched beside her, shielding her mother’s body.

  The dream pulled him closer and he saw, as clear as a single star in the black tapestry of night, a small white spider on Selina’s neck. It sank its fangs into her skin and she collapsed. The Midnight Stone rolled from her hand. He saw himself – the boy on the roof – rush to catch her and then the crows swirled around, blocking the vision.

  As they broke apart again, Caw’s spirit was somewhere entirely different.

  Above a wood that stretched for miles – though in the distance he saw a city sprawl. Blackstone? Perhaps. He dived into the woodland canopy, leaves whipping at his face. Branches shot past as he weaved between them at breakneck speed. He darted between trunks, and though he wanted to close his eyes, he couldn’t. At any moment he expected to collide with unforgiving wood, but he did not. Then he burst into a clearing and slowed. A figure stood in the centre, where moss had claimed the carcass of a falling tree, and moonlight cast everything in ghostly shadow.

  It was a young woman. She wore a long cream-coloured coat and her hair hung in a single dark lock that looped over her shoulder. She carried a handbag at her side. He saw delicate features and strong black brows – and his heart leapt. It was his mother, many, many years before. She looked so young she might not even have been twenty years old. Her head jerked up, but not towards him.

  Someone else stepped into the clearing.

  A young man, dressed in a black suit with a white shirt open at the chest, his black hair combed straight back revealing a widow’s peak. The Spinning Man. In addition to his youth, there was something ever so slightly odd about him that Caw couldn’t place.

  He looked to his mother again. Why wasn’t she running? She didn’t even look afraid.

  As the Spinning Man strode towards her, she reached out her arms. Caw hung in the sky, shaking with disbelief.

  The young man and woman linked hands for a moment and spoke a few words Caw couldn’t hear. Then she opened the handbag and took out a box the size of an apple. Elizabeth unclipped its catch and opened it towards the spider feral. Caw saw the Midnight Stone gleaming inside. The moonlight caught its surface and it reflected the glimmer of excitement in the Spinning Man’s face. And now Caw understood why he looked so strange. It was the eyes. Caw had always seen them as black wells of hate, but the eyes of this young man were normal – brown irises set in white – kind, even. The Spinning Man reached out with his long pale fingers, but Caw’s mother closed the box again.

  What was this? Why would his mother have shown her most treasured possession to their mortal enemy? She had broken the vow of the crow line. The vow to keep the Midnight Stone a secret …

  The dark clouds above sped up momentarily as the trees rustled and a red sun broached the horizon, throwing spokes of purple and golden light across the forest. The burning orb rose quickly, fading from red to orange then yellow, and the sky became pristine blue. Caw heard laughter and the tinky-tonk chimes of a fairground ride, and then the forest vanished.

  He was sitting on a branch in a park. Flowers bloomed in pretty beds and a fountain tossed sparkling columns of water into an ornamental pool. He jumped from the branch and swooped over neatly mown grass, past a set of open gates where wrought-iron letters spelt out, BLACKSTONE PARK.

  It was nothing like the park he knew – an abandoned, lonely place where no one ever ventured. In this vision, it was alive with families dressed in old-fashioned clothes, bonnets and breeches. Women carried brightly coloured parasols, and some children were playing with a little dog that scampered back and forth.

  Caw’s flight took him to a bench where an old man sat. Three children watched open-mouthed as he held his hands in front of them. Caw saw cotton threads suspended between his fingers. No – they were too thin for that, too delicate. And there were insects scurrying along them.

  Silk webs.

  A spider feral …

  One of the children came closer and dropped a coin into a hat that lay before the old man on the ground. He nodded kindly and the children ran away giggling. The man flicked a glance at Caw and smiled. Then a gust of air snatched Caw upwards and carried him away.

  As he rose above the park, he saw the city once more, but a shrunken version. Gone were the prison and the skyscrapers; gone the industrial sprawl south of the river. Wide avenues with grand houses rattled with horses and carts. Caw flew into the garden of one of them, landing on a low wall overgrown with weeds, where two identical young girls were holding hands and spinning round. Faster and faster they went, until momentum broke them apart and they toppled into the grass. One rushed to the other, holding out a hand. As they touched, a column of spiders criss-crossed their fingers and they both giggled. They waved at Caw, showing gap-toothed grins.

  The girls and the house vanished, and Caw found himself standing on the stone wall of a well, under a tree. Once more he was looking down at the old Blackstone that Corvus had brought him to. It was night-time. Caw was alone.

  He heard a noise – a scream – and turned away from Blackstone, gazing across the fields. Grey corn swayed. Beyond the expanse of crops, Caw glimpsed a flicker of fire. He took off from the well and glided across the fields. He made out an isolated barn, squatting in the corner of a far-off field, and flaming torches. They were moving in a procession towards the building, and Caw saw them slip inside. Circling the barn once, he saw a small half-open hatch on the upper floor, under the eaves. He f
lew inside, landing on one of the rough-hewn beams that supported the roof.

  Below him, the people carrying the torches had formed a circle round a woman. Her face was bruised and swollen, and she was limping.

  One of the group stepped forwards and backhanded her across the cheek. Caw gasped. It was Black Corvus.

  “If you see any of her spiders, burn them,” said Corvus to his companions.

  “Please …” said the woman. “I’ve done nothing wrong, Thomas.”

  Corvus’s lip curled in a sneer. “Don’t lie to us,” he said.

  “Who made you our leader anyway?” said the woman.

  Corvus raised his hand again and she cowered back. Then he turned to a man with a torch and nodded. “Bring him in.”

  The door to the barn swung open and another man staggered through. Two wolves snapped at his heels.

  The woman shrieked.

  “Mary!” cried the man. He tried to run towards her, but one of the wolves grabbed at his trousers and he fell headlong to the floor. The bruised woman took a step towards him, but Black Corvus thrust her back and two others from the circle seized her arms. She struggled, but couldn’t break free.

  Corvus stood in front of her. “You stand accused, spider talker, of sharing the secrets of the ferals. How do you plead?”

  “He’s my husband!” she shrieked. “Please, he won’t tell anyone else.”

  “Then I find you guilty,” said the crow feral. “Our secrets must be guarded. Under pain of death.”

  “What have you become, Thomas?” said the woman. “All because I chose someone else – is that why you punish us?”

  “Not another word!” said Corvus. “You are not worthy of my protection.”

  The woman turned to the others in the group. “We are supposed to be allies. Friends! Matthew? Mr Cooper? Rebecca? I beg you – stop this madness!”

  But each of them looked away.

  Corvus turned from her and strode towards the man being guarded by wolves. He lifted both hands to the ceiling, as if reaching to grasp the sky. The two wolves padded away to join a bearded man in the circle. Caw felt the presence of many crows above, gathering over the rafters. He sensed the weight of their anger and a terror filled him.