Day of the Spiders Read online

  Of course, Joanne was dead. She had been bitten over a half a dozen times and then used to breed more of the mutated horrors that made their way to Newtown, but Boris was never going to accept it, never. His wife was alive and well somewhere and she would come home one day.

  Until then, Boris moped around the house, eating beans straight out of the can and any other tinned food that he would go and buy from the shop at the bottom end of the road. He used to watch television too, until his repeated failure to pay the electricity bill led to him being cut off. He didn’t care. He was happy to sit in the dark once the sun had gone down, lost inside his own repeating thoughts that would eventually lead him down the road of taking his own life, he was dead certain of that. But he would always tell himself to give it one more day, just to see if Joanne was going to walk through the door and save him from his torment.

  Today was an especially bad day. His utter misery and self-contempt had been hounding him from the moment he had opened his eyes. Normally he would have a blessed few seconds as he rose from his sleep where his brain hadn’t fully booted back up. It was as if it had gone back to a time before all of this had happened and none of the negative processes that had dogged him for so long now were even present. But, then he would open his eyes. He would see the mess surrounding his bed, the piles of rubbish that were building up all around him, and the crushing weight of his broken life would come crashing back down on him, flattening out the little spirit that he had left. Today there had been no rest-bite. There was no small piece of hope for him. It was upon him before his eyes had even become unglued. He was pretty sure that this was going to be the day. This was going to be the moment that he had been working up to. This was going to be the end of the line.

  He got up and climbed over the junk that was between his bed and the door to the landing. Trash crumpled and crunched under his feet sending savage waves of decaying odours up to his nostrils. He went across the landing, kicking rubbish as he went along, no longer caring about any of it, no longer feeling anything except the hollow place in his guts where he used to keep all of those horrible human feelings, the love, the hope and the need for life, all of them now history to him.

  To compound his misery even more, his stomach felt like it was twisting and knotting into a ball. He must have eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him at all. He picked up the broken toilet seat off the floor of the bathroom and he balanced it on the bowl, He dropped his pants and sat on the less-than-secure ring and a huge diarrhoea movement rushed out of him, making him lower his head into his hands and groan. He stayed there for a few minutes waiting to see if there was anything to add to this moment of foulness. When he was satisfied that it was all over, at least for now, he looked over at the little table he had set up for his reading material and toilet paper, hoping that he had remembered to restock the latter. He was relieved to see that there was still half a roll there waiting for him and he reached out and grabbed it. The roll was halfway towards him when he felt something sharp puncture the tips of his fingers. He yelped and let the roll fall from his hand. It bounced on the grubby floor and partially unrolled. It came to rest next to the radiator on the wall. He looked at his wounded fingers and saw that there were two tiny sets of pin pricks on his fore finger and his middle finger.

  What the hell could have done that? He thought to himself.

  Whatever it was, the tips of his needled fingers were beginning to swell up right in front of his eyes. He leaned forwards, the seat wobbling precariously underneath him, and grabbed the fallen toilet roll. He held it up so he could have a look down the middle to see what had spiked his fingers.

  Suddenly a spider emerged from the middle of the roll. It was the biggest goddamn spider he had ever set eyes on in his life. The spider shot out of the toilet roll and ran upwards onto his wrist. He bellowed and shook his hands as violently as he could, sending the toilet roll and the spider skywards. The toilet roll hit the floor again, but the spider came right back down on his naked left leg. It sank its fangs into his exposed flesh. He felt the hot needles penetrate his skin for the second time and he roared again. He batted the spider away, his skin crawling with revulsion and utter terror. It flew across the room and hit the door frame. He heard the tiny splat of its body smacking against the wood. It fell to the floor on its back and it lay still. Boris watched it carefully, hoping on top of hope that the impact with the wall had killed it. It lay in a crumpled little heap with some of its legs curled up and some of them spread out flat against the floor.

  “Yeah, that’s wha’ you get if ye fuck wi’ me,” said Boris.

  The spider suddenly flexed its legs and stood up again. Boris was frozen to the spot, his breaths coming in short, shallow snaps. He thought that the spider would run for it, go and find somewhere dark to hide just like all the others that he had chased and failed to kill. But it shuffled itself around to look at him. It stayed there for a moment and then it charged full pelt at him. This time he shrieked and jumped up off the toilet. He charged for the landing, holding his trousers up as best he could. He went backwards out of the door and was horrified to see that the spider had turned around and was charging at him again. He groped blindly behind him and found one of his empty cans of deodorant sitting on the bannister rail. He gripped it in a shaking hand and brought it down on the spider as hard as he could. He struck it dead centre and yellow gunk splattered from its ruptured body in all directions. Some of it caught Boris right in his eyes. They immediately began to burn as if he had pepper spray blasted into his retinas. He screamed, bringing both his hands up to try and wipe the fluid away. His trousers fell to the ground and ensnared his ankles again. His balance started to go. His left foot went down the first step of his stairs and then he fell, his arms shooting outwards in vain to try and catch himself. He fell backwards, his back striking one of the outcrops of the stairs. The impact immediately blew out one of the discs in his spine. His legs flipped over his head, and he half rolled, half bounced down the rest of the stairs. He hit the floor of the hallway on top of his head, breaking his neck so severely that a slice of bone punctured through his windpipe. He folded into a heap on the litter covered floor trying with everything he had to try and get air into his lungs. He wanted to claw at his throat, but his ability to move any of his limbs had been ripped away by his savage injuries.

  Boris had killed the spider. But, in the wet darkness of his front room, piled high with junk and stinking rubbish, more of them were hiding. They had been waiting for their chance and now it had come. The discarded newspapers began to rustle and patter with the movement of hairy legs of all shapes and sizes. They had a job to do.

  Boris got his wish that day, finally. Just before he finally lost consciousness, lying there in a broken heap on the floor, he felt the faintest hint of gratitude. His pain was coming to an end, finally. The last vision before his eyes was of Joanne. She was walking in through the doorway, a smile spreading across her face. She was home. They were both finally home.

  5.

  Thompson had an inkling that this day was going to go his way. Normally he would hit some pretty bad traffic as he hit the junction of Hemmington Way and Lowbridge Road. There were no traffic lights and no roundabout to control the constant flow of vehicles, so it was basically a free-for-all every single day. He had witnessed some of the most prominent cases of dumbfuckery he had ever seen at that junction, including people taking that hellacious right turn directly into oncoming traffic causing a screeching of brakes and a blaring horn. Sometimes a set of curses and some choice hand gestures would be exchanged. On one occasion it had resulted in two middle aged men squaring off in the middle of the crowded road, ready to wage war on their way to the office over an inch of road space. Thompson had intervened on that occasion, waving his badge at the two men and threatening to run them both in if they didn’t knock off the shit and return to their cars. It normally happened when a driver had got to the point of frustration that they stopped giving a toss any more.
Some days it was bad, other days it was bloody awful. However, when he had pulled up to the junction this morning he had got the right turn without even having to wait. It was a welcome bonus, and probably one that wouldn’t be repeated anytime soon.

  He went into the station, swiped his card and took the stairs up to the second floor. There was a lift but he had never used it in all the years that he had been here. He would have told you that it was to help him stay in shape, but the fact of the matter was that he had a fear of the damn things. He couldn’t for one minute imagine working in a skyscraper and having to get to the one-hundredth floor every single day. It would probably be the undoing of his entire career. Still, the daily trips up and down the stairs did help him to stay in shape, so it was never an inconvenience to him. He arrived on the second floor, swiped his card again to get through the main office door and walked inside. Almost everyone who worked in there greeted him in turn with a cheery hello. They all seemed to like him and they called him by his first name. He made his way through to his office and closed the door behind him, muffling the conversation, ringing phones and tapping of keyboards. He took off his coat and hung it on the hook on the back of the door. He went to his desk and fired up the computer. The damn thing was so old that he wondered if it had a key in the back that he needed to wind up a couple of times to make it perform better. He smacked his lips, wondering if another cup of coffee would go down well whilst he waited for the computer to finish waking up. He decided that it was a good idea and he took himself off to the modest kitchen area halfway down the office floor. He went in and he found John Wells, his partner of the last two years pouring himself a cup from the filter machine.

  “You must have read my mind,” he said. Wells jumped as if he had been goosed.

  “Christ Ged, you gave me a start,” he said. He pulled another mug off the hook and filled it for Thompson.

  “So, what’s new today?” said Thompson.

  “I’m gonna quit. I swear on my mother’s cracked old arse that I’m gonna quit,” said Wells.

  Thompson rolled his eyes. Wells had been talking about quitting since day one. “Roberts giving you grief?”

  “Grief? How about giving me shit to walk in every day of the fucking week. Has he got nothing to do but sift through the scum pile and give me all the crap that’s at the bottom? Jesus. It’s enough to drive you mad.”

  “Got you typing his reports has he?” said Thompson. He was purposefully needling him. There was nothing finer on this earth than listening to Wells rant and rave. For him, it was an artform.

  “You would think that he learned how to fuckin’ type by now wouldn’t you. He’s in charge of our collective destiny and he doesn’t have the brains that God gave to a gopher. I’m tempted just to fuck them all up so that he gets in trouble, but I would never hear the end of it. In fact, on the day I do get out of here, I’m gonna stand on his desk, drop my pants and take a big dump right on his laptop. Let’s see if he can figure out how to deal with that one. Stupid arsehole.”

  Wells fell silent, milked the coffees and took a sip out of his cup whilst Thompson stifled a laugh.

  “Why don’t I have a word, see if there’s anything brewing for us to go and have a look at. I think we could both do with some time out on the road, what do you say?” said Thompson.

  “I say yes please, chief,” said Wells and handed Thompson his cup.

  “Leave him to me. In the meantime, stop griping and get typing,” said Thompson with a grin.

  “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on chief,” said Wells. He left on Thompson’s laughter and made his way to his desk. Thompson took a sip of coffee. It was a little too hot to be enjoyed properly. It needed to sit for a little while. He slowly made his way to Robert’s office and tapped on the door. The door was made of clear glass, save for Robert’s name emblazoned on it in large black letters. Thompson had told Wells that he had that done just so he could have something to wank over. Wells had sprayed his mouthful of ham and cheese panini all over his desk when he had heard that one. Roberts had come out of his office to ask him what the hell he was playing at? The two men had roared with laughter until Roberts had left them be, shaking his head as he went back into his little room.

  He waved to Roberts, who was busy on the phone. Robert saw him and beckoned him inside. Thompson pushed through the door, mindful to not let his hand touch the glass. Roberts hated finger marks on his beloved door. He sat in the seat opposite Roberts’ desk and tried another sip from his mug. There was a high flush on Roberts’ cheeks that Thompson had seen many times before. It usually meant that he wasn’t having the best of mornings. He was sounding off to whoever was on the other end of the phone.

  “Don’t keep phoning me every time another department wets its pants, ok? Deal with it for Christ’s sake,” he growled and then he slammed the handset down. He regarded Thompson for a moment.

  “Good day?” said Thompson, knowing that he was poking a hornet’s nest. Roberts was right up there with Wells for sounding off.

  Out of the frying Wells and into the Roberts. He thought to himself and supressed a smirk.

  “No, it’s not a good day,” said Roberts with a deep tone of sarcasm in his voice. “It seems that our jurisdiction is now awash with dim-witted, imbecilic perpetrators of crimes which baffle me beyond measure. Already this morning, five people have been sectioned under the mental health act, one of whom was rabbit-hopping down the bonnets of a line of parked cars. He was as naked as the day he was born and he had a set of keys sticking out of his rectum. Good day? How about a smash and grab over in the east side of Hemmington City, except these jokers backed a car into an ATM and tried to drag it away with elasticated climbing ropes. Needless to say, one of them broke and somehow managed to blind one of the suspects in his left eye and he’s talking about compensation. I ask you, compensation! The whole world around us is going mad and you are asking me if I’m having a good day. Jesus H. Christ. I hope that you are in a state of mind to do some real police work today Detective Thompson, because the mood has most definitely been set.”

  Thompson shrugged, “That’s what I’m here for.”

  Roberts sighed and he threw a skinny file at him. “Here’s something for you. A three-year-old girl was killed in her back garden. Uniform are already down there and they have the area sealed off. We are waiting for a post-mortem and as you can probably understand the parents are pretty distraught.”

  Thompson nodded. “I’m guessing that the details are a little sketchy.”

  “Correct. I need you to get down there and have a look around, see if you can see any clues as to what happened. Once you have assessed then you can get forensics in should there be a need. Any questions?” said Roberts.

  “Is this a two-man job, as per protocol?”

  Roberts stuck his tongue into his cheek and raised an eyebrow at him. “I take it you want to get Wells off his desk and out into the real world?”

  “It’s all good experience for him, isn’t it? After all, he might be replacing me one day soon,” said Thompson.

  “You’re not thinking of leaving us, are you?”

  “Only since I met you,” said Thompson.

  Roberts managed a smile. “You got a big mouth Thompson, I won’t miss it one bit. Do you really want that little weasel on the road with you?”

  Thompson nodded.

  “Then be gone, Thompson. Take the weasel. See if you can teach him some table manners whilst you are out and about, or at least teach him to chew with his mouth closed. Now, if you will excuse me, I have other fires to put out,” said Roberts snatching the phone up again and dialling.

  Thompson took the file, stood up and went out of the room. Yes, he didn’t care for Roberts, but somehow his blunt style saved him a lot of wasted time. There was certainly no bullshit from the man and that had to be a good thing. He drank off the rest of his coffee and returned the cup to the kitchen before heading over to Wells’ desk. Wells was tapping away on his computer
keyboard and frowning deeply at his screen. He had on a set of reading glasses that aged him by about twenty years. He wasn’t even sure he needed them and that he only wore them to try and make himself look a whole lot smarter than he actually was. He looked up when Thompson approached his desk.

  “Please tell me you have a gig for us. If I have to stay at this desk all week I will take up alcoholism on a professional scale,” said Wells.

  Thompson smiled. “Get your coat Johnny boy.”

  Wells stood up, sending his chair rolling backwards until it struck one of the electric heaters that was attached to the wall. It made a soft metallic clang as it hit. He snatched his coat off the hook near to his desk. “Let’s go,” he said.

  **

  Wells began to relax the moment that they stepped out of the station. Thompson hated to dampen his apparent good mood by telling him the subject of their latest case. He could see Wells’ face falling as he relayed the story of Lottie Richmond to him. He knew this case could hit Wells pretty hard because he had a young family. His sons were only eight and four years old. It must have been a tough thing for him to have to do in his line of duty and he guessed that it never got any easier the more that you did it. Thompson had no idea exactly how it felt because he had never been blessed with children. They had wanted a family all along but for some reason Cindy had never been caught. She had gone to the doctors and there had been test after test, which showed no abnormalities. He had been tested too, having to endure the indignity of pulling himself a hand shandy in a little room and leaving his deposit in a little plastic cup. Cindy had teased him endlessly about it over the course of the following two weeks, accusing him of having a passionate affair with a cup and stopping him every time he put the kettle on just to make sure he was shagging one of the coffee mugs. By the time the joking had worn off he had come close to yelling at her. Everything had come back normal; his swimmers were in fine shape. They had put it down to, what they had called, unexplained infertility. They had talked about adopting, but they had never approached the subject with any real purpose. It was almost as if Cindy had resigned herself to never having kids, and as time went by they appreciated the fact that they had their lives all to themselves. A lot of their couple friends would always cancel on them because of a child being ill, or not being able to find a babysitter. They had none of these problems, and eventually they started to enjoy the fact that there was nothing really tying them down. Their talks began to steer towards things like exotic holidays whenever he could get the time off and the long-term plans for when he hung up his badge for the last time. He had all of that to look forward to, if he could stay in one piece in the meantime.