Itsy Bitsy Spider (Emma Frost #1) (2 page)

"I can't
believe you
inherited a real house, Mommy."

I looked at my seven-year-old son, Victor
sitting in the back seat of our old Toyota through the rearview mirror. He was
smiling and his small eyes sparkled. He had been so excited ever since we
received the phone call telling me that my grandmother, my father's mother had
passed away and much to my surprise, since I never knew her, she had left her
house to me.

My oldest daughter Maya was less excited to put
it mildly. But then again at thirteen not much was exciting, especially if it
involved me, her mother or anything remotely grown up and boring.

"Of course she inherited it, you
doofus," she said to her younger brother. "She's her only
grandchild."

"Well she could have left it to grandpa,
her son," I argued while finding my exit from the highway. "That
would have been the most normal thing to do. But for some reason she wanted me
to have it."

"Why?" Maya said with her lips curled,
making her look like she was extremely annoyed.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I have never
even known her. Grandpa says I met her once when I was just a small child, but
I don't remember it. Maybe I chose to forget because she was too scary," I
said and made a funny face.

Maya looked mad. "You're so ... so
pathetic."

"Wow. Well thanks."

That seemed to be the end of that conversation.
It had been a long ride from Copenhagen to Esbjerg and my children hadn't
exactly been talking much. It was getting dark outside the car's windows and
would be way past their bedtime by the time we arrived at our new house.

Victor had slept most of the way and Maya seemed
to feel it was beneath her dignity to talk to me for more than three minutes at
a time. She was pissed because I had made the decision for all of us. I had
decided to move there, to my grandmother's house on Fanoe, a small island in
the North Sea outside of Esbjerg. I knew it wouldn't be popular to make a
decision like that on my children's behalf, but there was no way around it. I
was broke and couldn't afford to keep our apartment in Copenhagen. I had been
fired from my latest job as a writer for a fishing magazine simply because I
had pissed off the chairman of the Danish Fishing Federation, DFF, by asking
him about the many bottles of expensive wine that the Federation had deducted
on their taxes this year. Needless to say it wasn't that kind of story the
magazine was looking for, so they kicked me out. Well, that's just the way
things go. I wasn't exactly looking for a long-term career in fishing
journalism anyway, but it was a paying job and I brought home enough money for
the rent and expenses that my ex had left me with when he decided it was more
fun to be with a twenty-five-year old intern at his TV station.

"Are we there soon?" Victor said with
a slight whimper.

"Why?" I asked. "You need to
go?"

Victor nodded heavily. "Badly."

Maya sighed and rolled her eyes. "You could
have gone when we stopped for snacks."

"I did," Victor said.

"But that's only like ten minutes ago. How
can you need to go already? We have stopped twenty times for you on this
trip." Maya accompanied the last words with a deep annoyed sigh.

"Maya. Your brother ..."

"Has a nervous bladder. I know. There is
always something with him, isn't there?"

That shut me up for once. What was I supposed to
say? Yes, there is always something wrong with your brother? Yes, he suffers from
anxiety attacks, light autism, strange seizures, occasional loss of bladder
control and maybe some other stuff that the doctors are just waiting to throw
at us? Yes, he hasn't been well ever since his dad just took off and only
wanted to see him every six months or whenever it suited him? Yes, I could say
all those things, but I didn't. What's the point anyway? She knew. Maya knew
Victor hadn't been well and she was suffering too, suffering because every hour
of my attention went towards him. She was a big girl, now. She was supposed to
be able to handle it.

"What's that smell?" she asked and
wrinkled her nose.

"That my friend is the smell of
Esbjerg," I said and smiled as I could see the town rise in front of us.
"We'll take the boat out to the island from there. It'll be fun once we're
on the boat. Just wait and see."

"Yay!" Victor exclaimed. "I love
boats."

"It smells like fish," Maya said and
held her nose.

I had to admit the smell was pretty bad and
opening the window only made it worse. "It is fish," I said trying to
sound cheerful. "Fish guts."

It didn't take
Astrid
many hours to lose track of time, but she
guessed it was getting closer to nighttime, since she was beginning to become
tired. She decided to lay down a little bit and closed her eyes and soon she
was sound asleep.

It wasn't until the morning the panic erupted
inside of her. She woke up and realized she was still trapped in the bunker and
now she was beginning to feel hungry. She got up and walked to the door again.
Then she started hammering it.

"Help!" she yelled but then felt bad.
Her mother always told her not to raise her voice.

"You're always so loud, Astrid. And shrill.
You should learn to keep your mouth shut. You don't have a pretty voice and
boys like pretty voices, so you stick to what you can do. You cook,
alright?"

"Yes, Mom."

Astrid sighed and decided to try again even if
she didn't like to be loud. "HEEELP! I'm in here! I'm trapped! Christian?
Can you hear me?"

She stopped and listened for footsteps or maybe
even voices. But still there was nothing. Nothing but the terror of silence.

She tried again. This time she clenched her
fists and hammered with all her strength against the iron door, and continued
till they became numb. Then she managed to put her fingers into the small crack
and tried to rip the door open, but it was stuck.

"Help!" she yelled while the feeling
of utter panic grew.

What if no one hears me? No
you stupid fool. Don't think like that.

She tried to scratch the door with her
fingernails, but had to stop because it hurt. Astrid sat down on the step and
covered her face with her hands. She was so hungry now. She looked up at the
ceiling.

Maybe there was another way out? There had to be
an air vent somewhere. Astrid got up and went to the end wall with the shelves.
She removed some blankets and touched the wall behind it, felt it, scanned it
for anything that could indicate that there was some secret passage way or just
a small hole that she could get through.

But there was nothing. She went through the
stuff on the shelves meticulously in the hope she could find something to break
the door open with. But she found nothing but the flashlight. She rose with it
in her hand and ran towards the iron door. While taking the last step, she
swung it and smashed it against the door, but didn't even make a bump.

She cried as she swung it again and again and
destroyed the flashlight, but never harmed the door in any way.

Astrid sobbed and fell to the cold stairs.

You really are no good, aren't
you
? she heard her mother's voice say.
Got yourself into trouble again. I knew you would.
He's not going to take care of you. Be a damned fool if he did.

No, no, Dr. Jansen says I'm
okay, remember? I'm good and healthy and strong. My man doesn't care about me
being smart or anything. He loves me, he said.

You fool. No one loves a
retard. No one, I tell you. No one!

Astrid wiped off her tears in disgust. Why did
thinking of her mother always do that to her? Why did it always make her feel
so bad about herself? No there had to be a way, there had to be. Astrid stared
at the canned food on the shelves, then sprang up and pulled one down. Luckily
it was one of those you could pull open. She didn't even need a can opener.
This was good, she thought to herself as she pulled it and the sweet smell of
ravioli hit her nostrils and tricked her deep hunger even more. This was very
good. Astrid searched everywhere and finally found a bunch of plastic spoons.
Relieved she sat down and started eating.

Things always looked better on a full stomach,
mother used to say. So as soon as she had finished this can, she would find a
way to get out of there.

We took the
last
ferry to get to the island. I had to drive past
the local police station to pick up the key to the house as soon as we arrived.
It was almost midnight as we finally found the right place. Everything was dark
now and the wind had picked up in the almost barren trees outside. I walked
through a pile of dead leaves someone had gathered with a broom earlier before
I entered the small building they apparently called a police station. The kids
wanted to stay in the car. Victor was asleep and Maya was listening to music on
her iPhone. I was tired now and looking very much forward to finally entering
my future home and throw myself on one of the beds. The house was still
furnished, I had been told by the lawyer who gave me the deed to the house. I
took that as a sign that I could move in right away.

"Are you serious?" Maya had exclaimed
when I told her back at the apartment. "Do you really want to live in some
dead woman's old furniture?"

"We'll get our own shipped over there
eventually, but until then, yes. Plus it's a really big house. We don't have
enough furniture to fill it up. I bet my grandmother's was nice. She was
loaded, you know."

"Couldn't she just have left us the money
instead?" my smart daughter argued. "Then we could build our own
house or stay in our own apartment and not have to leave the city for some
deserted island where only freaks would live."

"She left her money to grandpa, who's the
rightful heir to it being her son. I was just ... I'm sorry
we
were just lucky that we got this
splendid house out of it. I didn't expect to get anything."

"How do you know it was luck? Maybe the
house is really her way of getting back at you," Maya said and went to her
room.

I stuck my tongue out after her, and then
returned to my packing.

The police station looked almost deserted as I
entered. There was no one behind the counter.

"Excuse me?" I said and cleared my
throat. "Hello?"

"Freeze!" a voice said next to me.

I gasped and jumped. A guy came out of a door
pointing his fingers at me making them look like a gun. I raised both arms. He
laughed.

"Boy, you scared me," I said and
looked at him the way my annoying teenager did to me.

The guy laughed. I hadn't noticed until then,
but he was quite handsome. Blond with blue eyes, tall and very masculine. About
my age, maybe a little older but it was hard to tell. "I'm sorry," he
said. "I don't get out much as you can imagine. I don't get to have much
fun either. Especially not at night. Boy you should have seen the look on your
face."

"That was not funny. My heart is still
racing."

The police officer grinned. "I'm
sorry," he said again. "I really didn't mean to. It was just so
tempting."

"Okay, okay. I get it," I said.
"Maybe there is reason they don't let you get out much, huh? Maybe they
keep you at the nightshift for a reason?"

The officer tilted his head. "I never
thought about it that way. Hmm. Maybe you're right."

"You bet I am."

"I'm Officer Dan," he said and reached
out his hand. "Dan Toft."

I smiled and took it. "Emma Frost."

"Nice to meet you, Emma Frost," he
said and kept shaking my hand while still grinning.

"Likewise, Officer Dan."

He let go of my hand and went behind the counter.
"What can I do for you at this strange hour? Are you visiting our
island?"

"No. We're actually moving here. I was
supposed to pick up the key here? At least that's what my lawyer told me. I
thought it sounded strange but ..."

I never finished the sentence before Officer Dan
dangled the keys in front of my face. "These should be the ones. We do all
kinds of jobs for the public here on this station. Yesterday I walked Mrs.
Olson's puppy since she had fallen and hurt her leg and couldn't walk it herself.
Keeping people's house keys is the least of our jobs. It's kind of nice though.
We get to know people closely that way."

"Plus it means you don't have much else to
do, which means you don't have much crime here on the island. Must be kind of
nice, right?" I said and took the keys out of his hand.

"It sure is," he responded.

"Well, thanks," I said and started
walking towards the door.

Officer Dan ran in front of me and held it open
for me. I chuckled.

"See you around," he said as I walked
out.

I caught myself thinking I would really like
that.