Day of the Spiders Read online

  He went into the kitchen and made tea for the both of them. He came into the living room carrying the mugs and set one down on the coffee table. Mary had put the ten o’clock news on. That usually meant that there was nothing else on the television worth watching. Braden set his own mug down and crashed down on the sofa next to Mary. She shuffled along the cushions and rearranged herself so that she was leaning on him. Braden put and arm around her and she leaned her head on his chest. They sat in a comfortable silence for a little while, just enjoying the peace and quiet after Jax had gone to bed. The local news came on and the stories of the missing teenager and the murdered cat were the first two stories out.

  “I just can’t imagine what her parents are going through,” said Mary.

  “Hell, I would guess,” said Braden.

  They fell silent again. The local news went through a few more stories and then the weather report came on. For once it was good news, it was going to be cold, but sunny.

  “Are you really not going to work this weekend?” said Mary suddenly. Braden had an idea that she was working herself up to asking the question. Perhaps she was slightly fearful that she was going to piss him off.

  “No, I’m not working this weekend,” he said. He felt a mild irritation, but he couldn’t really blame her for having doubts about his conviction. She sat up and looked at him.

  “What’s changed?” she said.

  “I guess that I’m just beginning to realize what is more important to me,” he said.

  Mary smiled. It lit up her face. “Why don’t we drink this tea and get ourselves an early night.”

  Now it was his turn to smile. “Sounds perfect,” he said.

  They drank tea, went to bed and made love. It had been too long, far too long. Mary was asleep soon afterwards. Braden tried, but something was nagging him at the back of his mind. He tried everything in his power to shrug it off but it wouldn’t go. He had seen the picture of the mutilated cat. He didn’t know how on earth it could have survived long enough to get home with the injuries it had, nor did he know what kind of a human being could have inflicted such terrible injuries on an innocent animal.

  Unless it wasn’t human.

  He wanted to get out of bed and go and power up his computer so he could do a little research on the area around Corsica Road. But, another part of him wanted to stay in bed with his wife where he belonged. That part of him just wanted to let it go. Even if he found the answer to his questions, what good would it do now?

  He fought with himself for another hour and then he fell into a restless and shallow sleep. By the time that morning came around and Jax was jumping up and down on the bed to get him up, he felt more tired than he had done the night before. He decided that when there was a quiet few minutes he would have a quick look on the laptop, just to satisfy his curiosity and then that would be it, no more.

  In the meantime, he had to be the perfect husband and the perfect father, nothing less would do.

  2.

  Meep-meep

  Meep-meep

  Mee….

  Gerald Thompson groped for the radio alarm on the side of his bed. He fumbled around, knocking his paperback and his reading glasses on the floor in the process. He managed to find the button and gave it a healthy slap. The Meep-meep got cut right off in mid-flow. He let out a heavy sigh.

  “Is it seven already?” said Cindy, in a weary, sleep-thickened voice.

  “’Fraid so,” said Gerald, falling back down onto his pillow. There was a greasy spot just under his right ear where he had probably been drooling again. His mouth was parched and his vocal chords felt dry and creaky. They needed some good, strong coffee to grease them right up again. “I think I might call in sick,” he said to Cindy, his wife of the last thirty years. The corners of his mouth ghosted with a grin in anticipation of her response.

  “Bullshit, Mr. Policeman,” she muttered.

  Gerald wheezed laughter. She had called him Mr. Policeman since the first day she had seen him put on a uniform a million years ago. He didn’t have a uniform now, not since he had been promoted to D.C.I. fifteen years ago. Now all he had to worry about was a decent shirt and tie, of which he had plenty.

  “I could stay home and make love to you all day,” he said to Cindy, still grinning.

  “Bull-shit, Mr. Policeman,” she said, louder this time. She lifted her head off the pillow. Even at age fifty-two, and first thing in the morning, Cindy Thompson looked like a pretty fine woman to him. He turned towards her and planted a kiss on her cheek.

  “Very smooth, now get out of here and make me coffee,” she said, slapping him on his bare shoulder. She knew that it would be her who would make it downstairs first, such was the length of time it took Gerald to get himself ready to go. It was only on his off-days that she would enjoy the fruits of his kettle related labour, and if she was honest about it, she preferred her own. Gerald always made it just that little bit too strong.

  “Yes, my love,” he said and rolled over. He stood up out of bed and stretched, feeling his joints click and crackle. He wasn’t in bad shape for a man of his age. He was only two years older than Cindy, and his waist line was still within the acceptable boundaries of good health. He had been blessed with a pretty solid metabolism and in in-built hatred of junk food that had served him well over the years. He was the pristine example of a well-balanced and healthy individual, a real goody-two-shoes, as his brother Eric had told him over and over again as they were growing up.

  He went into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He hated the morning shower, but it had become ingrained into his routine like a cigarette addiction. If he skipped it, then he would be sluggish and half-witted all day because he psychologically hadn’t woken himself up with a good wash. Crazy, yes, but he couldn’t break the habit. He daren’t break the habit. He turned the shower on and watched it splutter into life with a sigh. He looked at himself in the mirror which was over the bathroom sink. He saw the semi-permanent wrinkles in his brow and the crow’s feet around his eyes. He still had his hair, but it was mostly grey now, and it was starting to recede. He stuck his tongue out at his reflection and pushed the tip of his nose upwards.

  “You are a silly old fart, you need to hang up your badge and go and do something else,” he told himself. He let go of his nose and it pinged back into its normal shape.

  “Did you say something dear?” said Cindy from outside of the door, startling him a little. She was heading past to go and get the kettle boiling so she could have a reasonable strength to her morning cup.

  “Nothing, just singing to myself,” he called back.

  “It’s too early to be jolly,” she called and then made her way downstairs. He smiled to himself and began to undress ready for the shower. He hoped today would be a nice easy one. He had a week off booked as soon as his slate was clear enough for him to do so. He had been carefully doling out the workload so that it would happen sooner rather than later. He hadn’t taken Cindy away on holiday for over a year now, and he knew that she was beginning to get itchy feet. She needed a change of location, and if he was honest about it, so did he. He fancied going somewhere hot and sunny so he could slob around and catch up on his reading. He remembered the last few times they had been away. They had gone over to the Costa Brava in North-East Spain and spent two weeks each time lazing around in the sun and going out every night to eat. When they had sat in the sun they had both spent most of it asleep, as if they were catching up on all the extra sleep that they had been missing out on, such was the price of modern day living. He fancied some of that lifestyle. He couldn’t wait for it. For now, however, it was business as usual. He stepped into the shower cubicle and gritted his teeth against the hot water that was cascading from the shower head.

  Once he was washed, shaved and suited up he went downstairs and found Cindy at the table reading the morning paper. She was slowly chewing a piece of brown toast, pausing only to wipe crumbs from the corner of her mouth. In his place was a tall
cup of coffee with a dash of milk, just as he liked it. He wasn’t a breakfast man at all. He didn’t usually start to get hungry until well past ten o’clock and it was a habit that he had never been able to change in all the years he had been getting up early. His long hours usually meant that he had to just grab food whenever the urge took him. It was a waste of time trying to have a routine during the day, anything could come up at any given moment and throw the whole thing right to the dogs.

  He pulled up his seat and took a sip of the coffee. It hit his taste buds like a blessing from heaven above. Cindy looked up at him and gave him a smile.

  “What?” said Gerald.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking that we should go out tonight,” she said and wiped away the crumbs again.

  “Anywhere in particular?” he said.

  “Pub crawl, night club, fish and chips afterwards,” she said, still with that cheeky smile spread across her face.

  “Do you have any idea how long it has been since either of us saw the inside of a nightclub? Or stayed out past eleven? Are you having a mid-life crisis my love?”

  “Oh, you old spoilsport,” she said and returned her eyes to the newspaper. Gerald sipped more coffee.

  “How about a nice dinner and a trip to the cinema. I might even pay if you’re good,” he said.

  “Ooh, you old charmer. I’ll tell you what, if you pay then I might put out too. Might being the operative word,” she said, her eyes still on the newspaper. That little smile was twitching around the corners of her mouth again. Gerald got up from his stool and moved over to her. He scooped her up out of her seat, his arms going around her waist. He loved the feel of her body in her silk dressing gown, it got his motor turning over every time. He kissed her neck just below her ear.

  “Well, I might put out too. Might being the operative word,” he mumbled in her ear. He felt her skin break out in goosepimples, the same way it did every time he whispered in her ear. She let out a giggle and then planted a warm kiss on his lips.

  “You’re a bad boy, Mr. Policeman,” she said. “Now get lost before I get crumbs on your nice suit.”

  He kissed her again and then he let her go back to her newspaper. He picked up his coffee and went through to the living room. His mobile phone was on the top of the fireplace on its charger. He always switched the damn thing off the moment he got home, he didn’t like to be disturbed when he was on his down time. He also hated the idea that anyone could reach him when he was off duty. There had to be a distinct time of day when he could say that enough was enough and he was going to spend some time being human instead. He powered the phone up and drew the curtains back so he could have a look out of the window.

  They had moved to Layton Town nine years ago. The moment that they had come to look at the house that he was now standing in, they both knew it was the perfect place for them to go. The house was on the very outskirts of the town on the road that led right out towards Layton Valley. Once you got to the outskirts of the town the road climbed upwards very quickly, affording you a view of the rest of the town that was absolutely breath-taking. The view from the front windows was stunning. The whole town looked like it was laid out right before them, with the church spire poking up right in the middle of it all like a holy exclamation point.

  This morning, the sun was just above the horizon, setting most of the town in a silhouette. There was a light mist rising with the warmth of the new day making the sun beams radiate a golden colour all over the scene in front of him. The sunlight washed into the room warming Gerald as he stood drinking his coffee and taking in the scenery in front of him. He didn’t mind helping to police this town. There wasn’t that much in the way of trouble anyway. It was only when he was called over to Hemmington City that there would usually be something to get his teeth into. There had been a fair few murders there over the years. Not a lot when you compared it to other areas of the country, but enough to keep him in work. There were a few snatched children, a couple of paedophiles and other assorted dregs of society that he had to deal with, but most of it had been pretty plain sailing. Superintendent Carl Roberts was his immediate superior. He really didn’t care for the man, but he had enough respect for him to be able to work with him effectively. They were just from different sides of the same coin, both of them just as passionate about police work. But Roberts was a fair few years younger than him and he didn’t quite have the instincts that Gerald had built up over the years, and he never had hunches. Gerald had them, more and more as the years crept on by. Nine times out of ten, his hunches would prove to be absolutely on the money. But Roberts never wanted to hear about them. He always reminded him just to deal with the facts, or risk getting himself in hot water. Gerald usually would nod and say ‘yes sir’ in the right places and then go about things his own way anyway. His way hadn’t steered him wrong in the past.

  The most important hunch of his life was about moving to this house. They had a perfectly nice home before they had moved to Layton. It was a house that had a two-car garage, a great big garden at the back and enough local amenities so that you wouldn’t ever have to get in the car for anything if you didn’t want to. The old house had been in Newtown which was a good twenty miles in the opposite direction to where they were now. They had lived there for fifteen years before he started to get the creeps every time he walked in the door at the end of the day. Cindy would question him about it, but he could never quite put a finger on what it was that was bothering him. It got so bad that he stopped sleeping at night. He would lie awake in bed, listening to Cindy snoring gently next to him, his skin crawling all over as if it had a life of its own. He would try and go over everything in his mind that could possibly be making him feel like he was in any way unsafe. Did the windows have locks? Yes, they did, nobody could get through those without waking the dead. Did all the doors have the right locks? Yes, they had bolts at the top and bottom on the front and the back. Any potential intruder would have had to use a power tool to get inside, and that wasn’t going to happen without attracting a hell of a lot of attention. Why did he feel this way? What was making him so uneasy? It was the same way that he would feel if he was interviewing a suspect he just knew was guilty despite the evidence that said otherwise. It was the same feeling every time he walked into the house. The warmth seemed to go out of the room, his stomach would churn and something inside of his head would begin to itch. It was a hunch. Plain and simple, it was one of his hunches.

  He had talked to Cindy about how he was feeling about the house. They had argued (something that they didn’t do very often) and then gone to their respective corners to lick their wounds. When the heat had gone out of the situation Cindy had told him that it wouldn’t do any harm to at least have a look what was available in the surrounding area. She was pissed off at him for wanting to leave their perfect house, but she knew to trust his hunches. She saw that look in his eye, that look that turned him from being a strong, able man to a frightened little boy every time he came home. He could barely sit still, unable to read the paper, or watch television without getting up every twenty minutes or so to go through to the kitchen and then return a moment later with nothing in his hands.

  He had a hunch about the house. Something bad was going to happen here. He told her so, and she believed him. Before long, neither of them could settle. Both of them would jump out of their skins if something creaked late at night and if anyone knocked at the door….

  So they had found the house in Layton and they had moved. Cindy couldn’t have been happier with the new place if it had been constructed out of gold. Whether his hunch had been right or not, it had led them to this house, and she loved their new home.

  It turned out his hunch had been absolutely spot on, because just three weeks after they had signed off on the new place, Newtown was wiped off the face of the earth. Bio-terrorism, the news was saying. Playing God with Mother Nature to hold the government to ransom, that was the big story here. That and the plague of spiders that had
swarmed all over the town.

  When he had seen it on the news, his blood had turned to ice and his mouth had hung open. There was Newtown in ruins and the face of the man that had done it splashed all over the screen. Cindy had been calling him into the kitchen to come and get his cup of coffee that she had made for him. She had given up shouting him and had come into the living room to see why he had suddenly gone deaf. When she saw the images on the television screen, the cup that she had brought in fell from her hand as the strength had gone from her fingers. It had hit the floor like a bomb spraying both of them with hot coffee. Not that either of them felt it. They were too busy taking in what they were seeing and the implications of Gerald’s hunch.

  Since that moment, Gerald had always trusted his hunches without question, and so had Cindy.

  “Are you still here?” said Cindy coming into the front room. She had snapped him out of his little daydream. He looked at the clock and realised that he had been standing at the window for over twenty minutes. The sun was now fully up in the sky and the town was now fully visible out of the living room window. His coffee was now room temperature, still warm enough for him to drain the cup in two big swallows.

  “I had better get a shift on. I’ll be getting in trouble,” he said. He went over to Cindy and gave her a kiss. She took his mug from him.

  “Have a good day Mr. Policeman. Don’t forget, you owe me a date tonight,” she said and then kissed him again.

  “Message received and understood,” said Gerald. He turned to go and get his overcoat out of the cupboard and Cindy slapped him on the butt.

  “I’m doing the food shop this afternoon, do you want anything?” she said as he pulled his coat over his arms.

  “Nah, just the usual,” he said.

  “Have a good day sir. Love you,” she said. He blew her a kiss and then she went through to the kitchen. He peeked another look at her rear end as she went.