Itsy Bitsy Spider (Emma Frost #1) (7 page)

I woke up to
the
sound of someone screaming. It took me a few seconds to get back to reality
from my very weird dream about my dad and before I realized the screaming
actually came from within my own house.

"Victor!" I yelled and jumped out of
bed.

I stormed into his room and found him crumpled
up in the corner, shaking and screaming.  I kneeled next to him.

"Victor, sweetie. What's wrong?"

But Victor didn't even look at me. His face was
turned towards me and his eyes were looking at me, but he wasn't seeing me. It
was like he was seeing something else, like he was still dreaming.

"Victor you're having a bad dream, wake
up," I said and grabbed his shoulder forgetting how he never liked to be
touched.

As my hands fell on his shoulders I immediately
regretted having done so and pulled them away but it was too late. The eerie
screaming increased and was now followed by him yelling:

"No! No! NO!"

My heart was pounding in my chest and fear grew
that he was going to have one of his seizures. We were far away from a hospital
and I began speculating if they had any doctors on call or anything here on the
island since the nearest hospital was on the main land. Victor's entire body
was trembling.

"Victor, honey. Please listen to me. You're
just dreaming. It was just a dream."

But he wasn't listening. He stared into the
room, his eyes looking like those of a blind.

"Spider," he said. "Watch for the
spider!"

I turned to look and see and spotted a tiny
spider on the wall. I exhaled heavily and smiled. "I that the one you're
afraid of?"

I walked to the bathroom and pulled some toilet
paper out. I met Maya in the hallway with messy hair.

"What's going on? Why is Victor
screaming?"

"Go back to bed, sweetie. It was just a
small spider in his room. I'm removing it now so we can all get some
sleep."

Maya made a frown. "Great. Now he's waking
up the whole neighborhood over a spider? What a wimp."

"Just go back to bed, okay?" I said
with a sigh.

Maya turned her back at me and started walking while
shaking her head. "Spiders. Tsk. What's next, a beetle?"

I stormed back in Victor's room. "Mommy's
gonna remove the spider now, okay?" I said. "Then we'll all go back
to bed."

I reached over and tried to kill it, but it was
too fast. It crawled across the wall. Victor's nightlight made it cast a shadow
on the wall making it look much bigger than it really was. I heard Victor
whimper behind me.

"It's okay, sweetie. I got it. Just need to
try again."

Once again I leaned over and tried to catch it,
but again it was way too fast for me. I cursed out loud. "Sh ..." I
paused and looked back at Victor. "Mommy never said that, okay?"

He didn't answer. His eyes were fixated on the
spider trying to escape. I sighed and turned towards it again. "Third time
is a charm, they say," I mumbled and wondered why no one ever said that
about marriages. I reached out and finally managed to grab the black spider
between my fingers in the toilet paper. I pressed my fingers against each other
as hard as I could to make sure it was dead, then opened the paper and looked
at the remains. It had made a print on the paper.

"Kind of looks like a skull, doesn't
it?" I asked and turned to look at Victor who had finally stopped
screaming.

He didn't look at it, but kept staring at the
wall. "No more spiders there, buddy," I said. "I'm going to
flush this baby right out and then I'll be back to tuck you back in,
okay?"

I didn't wait for his answer but walked into the
hallway and threw the toilet paper in the toilet and flushed it. Then I walked
back. Victor was still on the floor in the same position when I returned.

"Come on, buddy. Back to bed," I said.

Finally he looked at me with his wonderful blue
eyes. "Mommy?"

"Yes, honey?"

"Can I sleep in your bed?"

I was startled. Victor hadn't wanted to sleep in
my bed since he was an infant. And I couldn't imagine him being comfortable
with being so close to another human being, even if I was his mother. I didn't
know if it was a good or a bad sign.

"Sure sweetie," I said with a smile. I
missed having him close to me. I missed being able to touch him.

Victor sprang up and ran towards the door. When
we were back in my bed and I had tucked him in with his own blanket and put
pillows up between us - his request so I didn't accidentally bump into him, I
couldn't fall asleep.

"Victor?" I whispered in the darkness.

He didn't answer but I could hear on his breath
he wasn't sleeping.

"Why don't you want to sleep in your own
room?"

He took his time. Then his small voice said:

"Because someone was killed in there."

She hated
cleaning the
gym. Every Thursday it had to be cleaned
and that was today. Clara wasn't in the best of her moods when she drove the
car into Irene Justesen's big estate. To be frank she was pretty tired of
cleaning and especially tired of Irene Justesen according to whom Clara could
never do anything right.

But she needed the money, didn't she? She needed
that extra cash because her no for good husband had lost his job. That was over
a year ago and still he hadn't found anything new.

"It's because we live on this stupid
island," she had told him several times. "There are no jobs on this
island. Why don't you go to the mainland and look for a new job?"

But all her husband did was to make fun of her
accent. Clara was German and had moved here to get a better life for herself.
Gerhardt, her husband and her had met in Kassel where she worked in a
restaurant as a waitress. Her mother had been sick at the time and Clara was
fed up with taking care of her.

"Cancer eats more than just the
patient," she used to say. "It devours the entire family."

Her father had left many years ago and she
didn't have any siblings so Clara was stuck with the old sick hag and didn't
have enough money or education to move away. Where should she go?

Then Gerhardt came along. A lot older than
Clara, but with promises of a life, living on an island close to the ocean.
Clara had never even seen the ocean in her life and now she got to live close
to it. Close enough to walk to the beach? She was thrilled.

But a year later Gerhardt lost his job as a
mechanic and since then he hadn't worked on much else but opening bottles and
emptying them.

Clara sighed and parked the old van in front of
Irene Justesen's private gym. It was huge, she thought. How could anyone have a
gym that was twice the size of Clara's house, she thought to herself. It wasn't
fair. The woman didn't even live in it.

Clara went behind the van and opened the back.
She took out the mop and bucket and all her chemicals. If there was one thing
Clara had learned while cleaning Irene Justesen's many houses it was that the
more chemicals she used, the happier Irene Justesen was. Simply because it
smelled cleaner, Clara had learned. How it smelled was more important than if
it was actually clean or not. Clara suspected that Irene Justesen was losing
her sight with age. But she also knew her well enough to never wanting to admit
that she was in fact getting older and she would never wear glasses, not if her
life depended on it. So Clara had learned how to cheat her and today she had
planned to skip mopping the floor in the gym. She would just make sure the
bathing area was clean and then clean the mirrors with her strong-smelling
spray. That always did the trick. Clara chuckled. She could be back at the house
and watch reruns of
The Little House on the Prairie
before lunch and still make a living.

"Beats going to an office every day and
sitting and staring into a computer," she mumbled and found the key in her
pocket.

She rolled her wagon with all her cleaning gear
closer and put the key in the lock. She turned it and pushed the door open with
her back first. She dragged the wagon behind her, reached to flip the light
switch when she suddenly stepped in something. Something wet. She looked down.
Was the floor soaking in something?

Clara smiled widely. It could be some water
damage. Maybe a water pipe burst somewhere, maybe in the dressing rooms. That
would be great. Then Irene Justesen would have to have it all fixed and that
could take weeks. Weeks that Clara wasn't going to have to clean the gym. It
sounded like music to her ears.

She leaned over and flipped the switch and
looked into the gym to better take a good look at the damage, when she realized
that the water she had stepped in was no ordinary water. It was blood. And not
only was she going to miss
The Little House
on the Prairie
, she was also going to lose her job.

As she opened her mouth to let out a horrifying
scream that would reach far beyond Irene Justesen's mighty estate, the last
thought Clara had was that at least Irene Justesen never had to worry about
getting old anymore.

One morning
weeks later,
Astrid heard footsteps close to the heavy
iron door. She was asleep when the sound of life outside her strange
suffocating world woke her up. Astrid opened her eyes and felt how her heart
started pounding. Had they found her? Were they finally coming for her?

She stormed up the ten steps and started
hammering on the door.

"HELP! I'M IN HERE!" she yelled with
all her strength. The emotions suddenly appearing were overwhelming, almost
overpowering. Could it be, could it really be?

Thank you God, thank you. They
haven't forgotten about me. They are coming. Someone is coming!

There was another sound from behind the door.
Steps from between the two doors leading to the world outside that she longed
to see again for so long time, and almost thought she never would again. She
hammered her fists into the door again, crying, feeling the rare feeling of
relief, that this nightmare was about to end.

"Please help me," she cried letting go
of all her emotions, her sadness, her loneliness, her anxiousness tricked by
the thought that she would never feel the fresh air again or see the ocean,
that she was going to stay in here till her body gave up.

Astrid felt the tears running down her cheeks as
she heard a rattle outside, the wonderful sound of someone unlocking the door
and opening it.

A hand in the door, the beautiful sight of
another human being. Astrid was hyperventilating now, oh how she was going to
enjoy being outside now, how she was going to look at the sky and watch the
clouds dance, how she was even going to love the rain on her face.

"Oh God, I'm so glad to finally ..."

Astrid didn't get any farther with her sentence.
Then she froze. The woman appearing in the door was well known to her. That
wasn't what caused everything inside of her to freeze and all her hopes and
expectations of being finally free to die. She even expected it might be her
coming since the bunker was after all placed in her yard. No it was what she
was holding in her hand that startled Astrid.

"What ... What ... are you doing with that
rifle?"

"Making sure you stay put," the woman
answered still pointing the rifle at Astrid.

"But ... but ... I thought ... But ...
Why?" Astrid felt the desperation and despair once again.

"I have food for you," she said.
"Food and water. Enough for you to get by for six months. Then I'll be
back."

Astrid couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Six months? Wha ... What are you saying?" She could hear the anxiety
and panic in her own voice, still she tried so hard to look for answers, to
understand. "Are you keeping me here?" The words felt like razor
blades in her mouth. It hurt just to speak them. She couldn't believe what was
finally sinking in. "Have you locked me in here on purpose?"

The woman didn't answer, but she didn't have to.
Astrid wasn't among the brightest but this she understood. Being threatened
with a rifle was very clear. This was no accident. Her being locked up for
weeks in the bunker with only canned food to eat was no accident.

 The woman stepped backwards and pushed
something with her feet. It was cans wrapped in plastic to make it easier to
transport. Hundreds of small cans with ravioli, some with soup, dried fruit,
cans of vegetable, meat, jam, and powdered milk. Behind it stood a pallet with
big containers of water.

"There is some boxes of chocolate and some
magazines in the brown back on top to make the time go faster. You can drink
the water from the tap near the toilet but it doesn't very good, so I brought
you some extra. And some soap to wash your hands. If you don't use too much at
a time it should suffice for a long time. There is also some new clothes and
underwear in the bag, so you can change. You can wash the dirty ones in the
sink," the woman said. "Now pull everything down the stairs. I'm
sorry I can't help you, but I have to hold the rifle, as you can understand. If
you try anything I swear I'll shoot you."

"But ...?" Astrid's lips were
shivering in fear. Spending weeks in this bunker so far had almost killed her,
now she was expected to spend another six months? How? How was she supposed to
survive? On canned food and bottled water? Surely humans needed more than that.
They needed company, they needed fresh air, they needed a change of scenery
from time to time. Could she survive down here? Did she want to?

"Why don't you just shoot me and get it
over with right away. I won't survive anyway."

The woman sighed. "Enough with the
questions, take the food or as God is my witness I'll shoot you."

Astrid knew the woman enough to know that such a
promise in the presence of God himself, wasn't to be joked with. Not coming
from this woman. Astrid nodded and started pulling the food down the stairs. It
was heavy and her back hurt badly.

Once she was done, she looked up at the woman
again with pleading eyes. It was hard for her to understand how anyone could be
this cruel.

"Will you ever let me out again?" she
asked.

"No."

Then the door shut with a slam and Astrid ran to
it, hammering on it with her fists, screaming and yelling.

"You can't do this to me! Why are you doing
this to me? You sick bastard. You're crazy. You can't keep me in here!"

 Astrid heard the outer door slam and then
there was nothing but that awful terror of silence again.