Once (33 page)

Thom felt a little hand grasp his and gently tug. As if in a dream, he allowed himself to be pulled, rising on trembling legs as he went.

‘Close your eyes if it helps,’ Rigwit advised.

“You must be kidding!’ The stairs below looked as if they were covered in bubbling oil. With his free hand, he reached for the centre post and quickly withdrew it when the wood stirred and little bodies with long legs ran up his arm. The spiders were less dense on the curving wall to his left, but that freedom made their swift scuffling runs even more frightening to watch.

‘I can’t do this!’ he shouted, shaking and thrashing spiders off his arm. He tried to turn back, but Rigwit, his arm and body stretched high, grabbed Thom’s hand again.

‘Y’can and y’will. Keep walking and think of pleasant things.’

Thom was in no mood for irony, but he could compare himself with this little man who clung to his hand like a toddler out for a stroll with his daddy. If the elf. wasn’t scared of the spiders, then why should he, a full-grown man, be? The logic of it failed to work. Thom felt the panic rising again, a volcano of panic, just waiting to erupt.

As if sensing Thom’s thoughts, Rigwit uttered some soothing words. ‘On the count of three, run like hell for the kitchen! One—’

Thom was gone, racing down the remaining steps, praying he would not slip and fall into the fermenting mass and not for a moment understanding why the elf’s last words had prompted him to take this course. Perhaps it was because fundamentally and deep down he knew there was no other way. There was no escape, neither in his bedroom, nor the roof. There really was only one course of action.

He imagined he could feel the crunching and splatting of their horribly tiny bodies and, at the bottom of the stairs, in the small landing where the doors to the bathroom, cupboard and kitchen were, the pile seemed to feel inches deep. It was both sickening and terrifying at the same time, and he tried not to dwell on it - not that there was time to do so anyway. Thom struck the big latch of the kitchen door and pushed hard, surprised there was no resistance, somehow expecting the multitude of spiders on the other side to shore up and hinder the door’s progress.

The glare (compared to the moonlight his eyes had become used to) from the kitchen’s ceiling light dazzled him at first, but he quickly acclimatized.

And almost became a gibbering wreck at the sight that greeted him.

They were everywhere. Literally, everywhere.

They coated the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the windows, every surface available. They even clung to the ceiling light, avoiding the bulb itself, which obviously was too hot for them. The sink, taps, chairs, ornaments, fireplace, the kitchen table, every possible piece of furniture, utensil, or object swarmed with them so that the room was decorated in a living, jostling motif.

And even so, spiders continued to rush from the jar’s open neck, fanning out, the speedier of the species climbing over the back of the slower ones, the bugs, the millipedes, dominant larger ones - the raft spider, with its distinctive

yellow ochre stripe and long hairy legs, the common garden spider with great swollen abdomen as if ready to give birth - pushing lesser ones aside as they rushed through the mob, while others dripped from the ceiling like the first heavy drops before a downpour, and still more hung from invisible threads, trapeze artistes swaying in the mild breeze created when the kitchen door had been opened.

Thom bent over and retched, a dry sound, the kind a dog makes before it vomits. Only silky drool fell from his parted lips and it soaked the backs of the tiny beasts thronging around his feet.

‘Keep moving!’ he heard Rigwit’s command from behind. ‘You mustn’t stand still, not for a moment!’ Little hands prodded his calves.

When Thom straightened, his first instinct was to run out of the front door a few feet away, run out and keep running, into the forest, escape to somewhere they couldn’t follow, but the elf seemed to have read his mind.

‘Don’t even think about it, lad!’ Rigwit yelled. ‘You’ll never be able to return here unless you do as I say. Now get the jar, it’s on the table. Get it and throw it out the door as far as you can. Do it now!’

Thom moaned. The upturned jar was covered with spiders, as was the book next to it, as was the whole kitchen table, legs and all! ‘I can’t,’ he wailed. ‘I can’t do it!’

‘Sure you can. Just remember, they can’t hurt you.’

They’re an illusion?’

‘I didn’t say that. But believe me, Thom, they can’t hurt you unless you let them. Focus your mind on the glass alone. Try not to think of anything else.’

Something dropped on to Thom’s head and when he lifted his arm to sweep it away, his hand contacted something much more bulky than he had expected. He sucked in a noisy breath and swept the spider away, using both hands to rake his hair, and stamped his feet like a child having a tantrum. He glimpsed the grey body and thick legs of a

hunting spider falling into the bristling mass as he executed his unintended war dance. Again, he was spurred into action, his fear hiding behind a thick layer of revulsion and panic. Forgetting that his left arm and leg were supposed to be debilitated (the wonderful power of panic and adrenaline combined), he ran for the table, frantically sweeping his arms before him to knock away the hanging spiders in his path, skidding once and almost going down, but mercifully regaining his balance and rushing on.

It wasn’t much of a distance between door and table, but it might have been a hundred miles as far as Thom was concerned, a gauntlet run that would have tested the bravest of men. He reached the table in no time at all - given the odd hundred years or so - and froze, his hands poised to grab, but his mind not quite prepared. Spiders crawled and slipped over the glass jar, the jar itself merely the entrance or exit, whichever way one chose to view it, of an endless tunnel through which tiny denizens of an underworld fled out into the light.

He could feel things dropping into his hair again, almost as light as snowflakes, as he considered the overturned jar, but his concentration for the moment was too fixed to swipe at them. Blunt needles scraped at his scalp. A tickle ran down his cheek.

‘Pick it up!’

Not only was Rigwit’s vexed shout in the room, but it was also inside Thom’s head. As if mesmerized, he looked round to see a small kinetic structure made up of teeming black shells and minuscule brown bodies and thousands of moving threads, all in the shape of his little friend Rigwit. Only the slanted eyes that blinked and dislodged clinging spiders and the moving lips gave indication of any life beneath it.

Crawling things wriggled into the elf’s mouth as he shouted, ‘Throw it out, do it now before it’s too late!’ The words were only mildly distorted.

Once again, galvanized, Thom leaned forward, flicked off

as many spiders as he could, then picked up the dirty glass jar by the upper rim of its opening.

Spiders - hundreds, vile, loathsome things - continued to spill from the top, but he took no notice of them - why should he? He was sharing a room with millions - and holding it out before him as though it exuded a nasty odour, he made for the front door. It was awkward to hurry across the piles (by the way his light boots sank into them, there had to be more than one layer) of crawling shells and bodies and his fear, among so many other suppressed fears, was that he would fall and land among them. What chance then? They would smother him in seconds, weaving their webs around him so that eventually he would be bound tight, unable to move, unable to swat them away … He forced himself to stop that line of thinking, tried to go numb, halt his imagination in its stride. Not easy…

Thom made it to the door and, with the glass vessel now in the crook of his arm (he shuddered and shuddered again until it became a constant shiver, for the spiders were still climbing over the rim, from there dropping to the floor or scuttling up his arm) he turned the key in the lock, grabbed the door-handle, and pulled. It jarred in its frame. He had forgotten it was bolted top and bottom.

He yelled in frustration and immediately two, three -God, it felt like a whole scrum! - maybe four spiders rushed into his mouth. Disgustedly and weepingly, he spat them out, not in the easy, cool manner that Rigwit had, but in a convulsive hawking, jettisoning them all like mushy pips, save for one which got caught between his tongue and the back of his teeth. He tasted its blood and the slop that was its juices and gagged, wanting to throw up but the vomit inside refusing to budge. Anyway, there was no time.

He reached up to the top bolt and lumps fell into his eyes so that he shied away, ducking and rubbing the lids before blinking them clear again. He was in a nightmare, only this

was real and his mind knew it was so. No other choice but to keep on, keep moving, do what had to be done. Thom located the bolt beneath the rummaging infestation, closed his eyes (he felt drops of rain on his eyelids - drops of rain? He wished!) and yanked back the bolt. The door moved a fraction inwards, the top pressure off.

Wasting no time at all and refusing to believe his body was now entirely covered in jostling spiders - accepting that fact was the sure way to madness and again, he had no time for that - he sank to his knees and grabbed what he hoped was the end of the bottom bolt. His grip crushed the little bodies smothering the bolt’s upright and he pulled hard so that the bar flew out of its supports. The door moved a barely perceptible millimetre, free of its restraint.

Something tickled the inside of Thom’s ear and began to venture further. Thom stuck in a finger and mashed it, then dug it out with the nail. It was hard - oh God, it was so fucking hard - for Thom to maintain the numbness of mind, but really there was no choice, he had to move on.

He rose and pulled the door open, all in one movement, and it was good, so good, to breathe the warm summer air, to see the brightest of bright stars, even if he had to blink away irritating distractions just to clear his vision. It was invigorating, exhilarating - my God, it was bracing! - just to feel and look upon the outside world, the reality instead of the nightmare. But it wasn’t over yet.

A stinging in his back. A bite to his neck. Pincers digging into his arm. They were becoming real! They had evolved from the phantasm to exist in the honest world, despite what Rigwit had told him. He realized that the longer the invasion had gone on, the more his belief in the normal had been weakened, so that the real had withered, finally giving in to the unreal. He was feeling pain, and if he didn’t follow through quickly, then it would be too much too bear.

Thom grasped the jar in his other hand, his right hand, ignoring the spiders and bugs and God knew what else that scrambled from its opening, drew back his arm and threw.

The glass jar described a perfect arc, bodies spilling from it like a Jetstream all the way, and landed almost at the forest’s edge. All his strength and determination gone, Thom sagged against the door-frame.

And watched the hurrying creatures as they fled the cottage, forming a rippling stream that funnelled back into the dirty glass jar.

BEFORE THE STORM

THOM AWOKE with a start, and overwhelming panic almost seized him yet again. He sat up in the bed and saw that he was alone in the bedroom and that it was daylight. The night was over, finished with; he was safe. The sight of the chest of drawers pushed up against the door reminded him of what had taken place the night before, the invasion of spiders, walking among them, throwing the carrier out of the cottage.

When the spiders had fled he had collapsed completely in the doorway, so weak again he feared another stroke was coming on. How long he had lain there, he had no idea, but it was the elf who had roused him and pressed a thimbleful of some sweet liquid to his lips, urging him with soft, kindly words to drink. Whether or not it was only in his mind, he had felt the potion sink into his body, then spread as though travelling through veins and arteries and even airways, reaching every part of his system, from toes to fingertips.

‘It will help you as you sleep,’ he remembered Rigwit had told him.

How he had got from the doorstep up to his bed was patchy - he’d insisted on locking, then bolting the front door, top and bottom, even though the elf had assured him the danger had passed for the night, and he remembered the long crawl on hands and knees up to the bedroom, Rigwit encouraging him all the way. But from there on, there was nothing. He had no recollection at all of pushing the chest of drawers against the bedroom door, nor of having climbed fully clothed into bed. He noted that his feet were bare and presumed Rigwit had pulled off his boots and covered his body with a bedsheet. Mercifully, sleep had swallowed him whole and had not even allowed a dream or two.

Thom rose from the bed, his body stiff, but his left arm and leg more mobile that he had expected. He drew circles in the air with his elbow, loosening the muscles of his left arm, then raised his left knee chest-high a few times, bending forward to meet it. The movement was awkward and hurt a little, but otherwise he was fine. Looking down at himself to examine his clothes, he saw the small dark patches, alien blood and squashed pulp, and his sweatshirt was torn in several places. He declined lifting the material to examine the skin beneath.

Instead, he went to the window and looked out at the woodland beyond. The day was grey, a vast blanket of light cloud filling the sky, covering the sun and dissipating its glory. The woods seemed very still, and when he listened, no bird calls came to his ears.

With some dread, Thom went to the stairs and looked down, expecting to see the small carcasses of spiders he’d killed; and see them he did. He was shocked, for another part of him had not expected them to be there, had thought all the spiders were imaginary, an illusion sent to the cottage by the wiccan, Nell Quick. And hadn’t Rigwit said they couldn’t harm him? Didn’t that suggest they had been real

only in his mind? Thom was confused. He had seen them, felt their scurrying legs on his own flesh yet they hadn’t stung or bitten him. At least, not until the very end … Lying in small scattered heaps was evidence of their existence. Maybe it was Rigwit’s persuasion that they couldn’t harm him that somehow nullified their effect at first. If the elf hadn’t arrived in time to convince him, who knows what his own mind would have accepted.

Thom trod gingerly on the stairboards, his bare feet avoiding the splats and leg-curled bodies, and at the bottom he warily opened the door to the kitchen. It was the same in there, empty of any living creatures but the broken shells and pulp lying in heaps all around, a spider’s graveyard whose sinister grimness was not lessened by daylight.

By the book - now closed, he observed - lying on the table was a jug containing the same juice that had revived him so well before; at least, he assumed it was the same. Rigwit, who obviously had closed the book, had left it there for him.

He called the elf’s name, but there was no response. Thom was frustrated, but presumed that although he was the guardian of the cottage, Rigwit did not actually live there. It seemed he came and went as he pleased.

Guiltily (because he should have remembered sooner) he tried to ring the hospital where Katy Budd had been taken in Shrewsbury, but all he got on his mobile phone was the usual static. He resolved to drive into town later and visit the hospital. The next thing Thom did was to drink the juice straight from the jug, almost finishing it all before he felt satiated. He felt the same reaction as the first time, a sudden invigorating zest for life, his mind clearing of negativity, his strength returning. Unlike any hardcore drug, repetition did not appear to diminish the effect. With new-found enthusiasm, Thom swept the cottage free of squishy corpses, stripped and tossed his soiled clothes into the big rubbish bin hidden away round the back of the place, and took a

long hot bath, scrubbing his skin hard with a brush, then soaking till the water cooled. Once dried, he realized he was famished, but quickly donned a midnight-blue short-sleeved shirt, medium-blue jeans, and soft black ankle-boots, before cooking a huge breakfast of bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes. He finished off the remaining juice in the jug and, wiping his lips with a tea-towel, he thought he could now take on the world.

The feeling was not to see him through the whole day.

He called her name in vain.

Thom had left the cottage earlier that morning and gone into the forest in search of Jennet, walking through glades he had visited with her, along paths they had walked together, but there was no sign of her. In fact, there were no signs of faeries at all. Nor of the animals that they had come across in such large numbers.

The woods seemed empty, barren, devoid of life save the flora itself.

Thom needed to see her, needed Jennet’s comforting arms around him, needed her to explain to him what was going on, for his return to Bracken had become a nightmare, the events of the past week beginning to weigh on him both in a mental and physical way. Whatever relief he’d had from the juice that morning was wearing thin, the enthusiasm and strength beginning to wane. But it wasn’t the only reason he wanted to find Jennet.

He knew he loved her. He could hardly think of anything else but her: the terrible events, his suspicions, the monster that had nestled on his body to steal his vitality, the attack by wasps and its consequences, the spider invasion, all remained in the periphery of his mind when he thought about her, her loveliness, her nature, the mere image of her overriding all else. If it hadn’t been for Jennet he might have

easily packed his bags, climbed into the Jeep, and left Bracken for ever. Well, maybe not. Maybe he would have stayed on until after Sir Russell had passed away. He owed that much at least to the man who was, after all, his grandfather.

Sir Russell was of the old ways, respectable and duly respected, someone whose set opinions and traditional values would never allow birth out of wedlock to be acceptable. Maybe he was a relic of the past, part of an era that was never quite as pious and honourable as it pretended to be; anyway he was Thom’s paternal grandfather and in the end that was all that mattered. Despite the rejection, Thom felt sure that Bethan - and perhaps even his father, Jonathan, Sir Russell’s son - would have wanted him to be there for the old man as death drew close, or at least, to be around, even if at a distance. Besides, he was curious to discover just what game Nell Quick and, so it seemed, Hugo were playing. What had he, Thom, done to incur their rancour?

He went on with his search, continuing to call Jennet’s name, his heart filling with dread as his echoes died away and only silence remained. There was no movement in the undergrowth, not even a shaking of leaves to indicate a fleeing animal, and no butterflies fluttered among the long flowers, no birds perched on branches or flew over the treetops. There was a strange quietness in the forest.

Finally, when he reached the lakeside, he cupped both hands around his mouth and shouted:

‘Jennnneeet!’

Calm ripple-circles made by feeding fish spread here and there over the glass-still surface. But nothing rose from the lake’s depths.

He called again:

‘Jennnneeeet!’

Once more, in despair:

‘Jennet!’

Thom sank to his knees, resting on his heels. He waited.

Disconsolately, he waited. Surely she hadn’t deserted him? Not when he needed her so much. He leaned sideways, rested a hand in the grass. Eventually he sat, chin on his knees, hands around his ankles. He shivered. Despite the season, the forest felt cold. And he felt alone. After an hour or so, he returned to the cottage.