Spider Legs (22 page)

Nathan saw a black bird take off from a small nest on the antenna. He saw Falow shoot the creature again. It backed up, mashed the antennas, taking with it a guidance computer for the ferry's engine, and fell into the sea again. The black bird's nest floated on the waves, but there was no sign of the pycno.

“Newfoundland Coast Guard!” Calamari shouted into the microphone. “Do you read me?” There was just static. All communications with the mainland were cut off as a result of the absent antenna. He paused for a second, as if hesitant about speaking his next thought. He replaced the microphone in its holder, surely dismayed at the prospect of guiding a ship with no communication. He tried to start the engine, but could not get
it to respond. He looked to his left and saw a pipe from the engine belching blue smoke and roaring like an old lawnmower. He probably couldn't get over the obsessive sense of everything going wrong. Nathan understood perfectly.

Nathan slumped with Natalie against a chair on the deck and noticed a piece of paper by the rail. At first he simply rolled his hands into fists and placed them on his hips, ignoring the paper. But he kept thinking that something was peculiar about it. It was wet with sea water and didn't seem to have been there before the pycno arrived.

Then Falow walked over to the paper, picked it up, and read the words to them all:

THE AVERAGE HUMAN ESOPHAGUS IS 10 INCHES IN LENGTH.

CHAPTER 32

Siege

T
HE SEA HAD
become a black meringue of foam and froth. Occasional waves vaulted over the ferry's sides and crashed down on the deck with a shattering force.
Whoosh.
A swirl of gray fog curled up along the outsides of the ferry's coffee shop windows like an old cat. The mood inside was tense. A five-year-old boy and his mother joined Natalie, Bryan, and Bill. She introduced herself as Brenda.

Bryan stood up, stretched his big body, and put his hands together making a tent of strong, hairy fingers. Bill looked out the windows, his large eyes filled with fear. In order to distract the little boy from the scary atmosphere around them, Brenda, his mother, brought out beautifully crafted wooden jigsaw puzzles and placed them on the Formica counter.

“Want to put together the Mickey Mouse puzzle or the Star Wars puzzle?” Brenda asked him with forced cheer. She was in her late twenties, a quiet woman, with smoke-blue eyes that tilted catlike. She had surely been quite striking a few years back, but now her ample bosom was becoming matched by a solidifying body.

“StarWars,” the boy replied as he clutched a tiny, ragged blanket. His eyes were enormous as he watched his mother dig
through an assortment of toys in her large pocketbook. Their small white poodle snuggled up to the boy with affection.

The lumberjack had finished his greasy meal and tossed the aluminum dish into the garbage. “How about a beer?” he said to Bill. Bill smiled and pointed to an old sign on the wall. It read:

ABSOLUTELY NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES SERVED!

“No exceptions, even now?” Bryan leaned his big arms on the oatmeal-colored chair. He looked around, perhaps belatedly noticing how the recent deaths weighed heavily upon the passengers.

“I'd be happy to make an exception now,” Bill said. “But we don't have anything except soda and orange juice. Try this.” He handed Bryan a cola. Bryan popped it open, tilted his head back, and took a swig. Then Bryan walked over to the window and gazed outside. There was no sign of the spider. Outside the moon was like a lacing of quartz on the black-velvet sea. He began to pace back and forth.

“I'll take an orange juice,” Natalie said, as she handed the boy a dollar bill. He went to the refrigerator and poured a drink.

“It's on me,” he told Natalie. “No charge today.”

“We can't just sit here and do nothing,” Bryan suddenly yelled. He pushed a coffee cup blindly to the side. It fell off the counter and shattered on the hard vinyl floor.

“We're waiting for the Coast Guard to come,” Natalie said. “It should be here soon. Try to stay calm.”

“If I were any calmer, I'd be in a body bag,” Bryan said. Natalie winced; all they needed now was a hysterical lumberjack!

“Our engine's dead,” Bill said. Natalie cast the boy a look that said,
Why did you have to say that?
Bill began to fill a water cooler with a plastic jug labelled FRESHWATER.

“I know that,” Bryan said, facing the boy but not looking directly at him. “The engine's dead. But Captain Calamari mentioned that the ship had something called a radio direction
finder. Maybe that helps.” Natalie did not tell him that the radio direction finder was used to help the ferry determine its own position at sea rather than for the Coast Guard to find the ferry.

A shy looking Inuit woman came into the coffee shop and sat by herself, away from the others, in the corner of the room. She never said a word as she looked outside the coffee shop windows.

“Actually, I think we could all use a little coffee,” Bill said.

“Good idea,” Natalie agreed quickly. Anything to break up the mood of apprehension and gloom.

Bill brewed a pot of coffee, and soon the delicious aroma filled the air. It had a tranquilizing effect on the passengers, taking away some of the horror of the night.

Suddenly from the bathroom at the side of the coffee shop came a muffled cry. Natalie's heart skipped a beat. But then she reluctantly walked to the bathroom door. At first she knocked on the dried-up wallpaper which covered the door. As she knocked, the wallpaper curled itself away from the door's metallic surface.

“Anyone in there?” Natalie said, as her hand rose to her quivering neck. The door slowly opened. From inside came a gust of hot, oily-smelling air.

“Smells like a pack of skunks,” Bill whispered.

The bathroom began to exude a smell of disinfectant that could not mask a melange of putrid biological odors. For a moment, Natalie didn't see anything in the shadows. The place was eerie and damp. It reminded her of the pendulum pit of Edgar Allan Poe. Brenda's poodle started to growl.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim light Natalie saw movement. A shadow, perhaps a leg or arm. She found it easy to imagine that the shadows on the walls moved like tarantulas which dripped poison from their fangs. Then from within the dark interior emerged a long hand with fingers all the same length, except for the ring finger, which was a good seven inches in length. They all had large bile-green nails at their tips. “Elmo!” she exclaimed. “What happened to you? You gave me a scare.”

“Sorry, I got stuck in there,” Elmo said. “I'm still pretty weak. The stench didn't help.”

Indeed it didn't. The skunk smell followed him like a cloud of pestilence. Bryan cried out in disgust. Brenda looked bewildered. The little boy looked as if he were about to say something naughty, but caught his mother's warning look and didn't.

But Elmo merely smiled and went to rejoin Lisa. Natalie was surprised at how good-natured he was, considering the discomfort he was in. Was it an act? Did Elmo and his sister Martha suppress an anger which would one day explode in a fit of sudden fury or in a warped act of revenge? Martha, perhaps, but she had seen too much of Elmo's courage in adversity to believe that he had any such problem.

Natalie returned to the counter, along with Bryan, Brenda, and her five-year-old. The child had finished the Star Wars puzzle and started the Mickey Mouse one. Brenda brought out
The Cat in the Hat
by Dr. Seuss and an old-fashioned kaleidoscope to keep her son occupied after the puzzle was finished.

“Could I have a cookie, Mom?”

“Sure.” Brenda handed her son a bag of Oreo cookies, from which he withdrew two. The boy carefully separated the chocolate wafers and licked at the white icing. “Good,” he said as the sweet icing dissolved on his tongue.

Without a warning, Bryan withdrew a steak-knife from his pocket and threw it across the coffee shop at the wall. It landed precisely on a large stag beetle that was crawling along the white woodwork of one of the windows. The knife protruded from the black beetle's back like a skewer in shish kebab.

“Why did you do that?” Natalie asked, rolling her eyes in total incredulity.

“I hate bugs,” the lumberjack replied.

Natalie let it go. This was going to be a long night.

“Wow,” the boy exclaimed, forgetting about the kaleidoscope. “Can I touch the knife, Mom?” He looked at the steak-knife in the wall and then back at his mother.

Nathan exchanged glances with Bill, indicating they thought Bryan was off his rocker. “What a nut case!” Bill whispered.

“Brenda?” Nathan said. “You look a bit pale.” His face was furrowed with genuine concern. “Let me get you a drink of water.”

“I'm OK,” Brenda said as a single tear dripped from her nervous eyes. Nathan handed her a glass of water. She continued to run her finger around and around on a water spot on the glass.

Bryan persisted in playing with his large knife. “Put it
away,”
Natalie said to him. Her fist slammed down on the Formica surface of a table. A bottle of ketchup in the center of the table teetered, rolled, and fell to the floor.

“You mind if I stack a few chairs behind the windows?” Bill asked Natalie. “Might help if the spider shows up again.”

She shrugged. “Go ahead.” She seriously doubted that chairs would stop the pycno, but if this made for greater confidence among the passengers, it was worthwhile. In fact, if it just got the freaky lumberjack settled, it would be enough. The sea monster was bad enough; panic would double or triple its effect.

Bill began methodically placing chairs against the many windows in the coffee shop. Brenda watched him and then whispered to Natalie.

“Think he's dangerous?”

Natalie smiled, preferring to interpret the question as humorous. If it referred to Bill, it was; if to Bryan, it wasn't. “Probably harmless, but I'll have to watch him.”

A beeping sound came from behind Bill. It was the microwave. “I made some popcorn,” he said as he gave a small dish to the little boy. The boy looked up from his puzzle and smiled. “Thanks,” he said, as his mother nudged him.

Natalie looked at Brenda and the child and was surprised to find herself suddenly on the verge of tears. She turned away and walked to one of the windows that Bill had not yet barricaded, trying to get herself under control. If she broke under the strain, who else would keep the situation under control? She loved Nathan, but he wasn't the type, and Falow couldn't do it alone.

She looked out into the darkness and a queer, all-consuming feeling of being watched stole over her. She pressed her face against the glass window and cupped her hands in order to see better, but nothing was visible out there. Nothing but heavy banks of clouds, which were coming in their direction. For a moment she thought she caught sight of some nearby movement, and she took a step back before realizing the movement was just the reflected blinking of her own eyes. She almost smiled a little at her own nervousness.

“Everything OK?” Nathan asked her as he followed her to the window.

“OK, considering what we've been through, and the fact that we don't know if it will attack again.” She was relieved to find that her voice sounded normal. The passengers would lose confidence if a police officer even
sounded
strained.

She held Nathan's hand but rather than receiving comfort she felt as if she were doped with Novocain. Fear did that, sometimes. Fear was the drug which numbed touch. Still she required closeness, so she took his hands in hers and pressed the side of her face against his. There was, after all, no need for secrecy; they had become a couple, and if the whole world didn't yet know it, that was because the world was a bit slow on the uptake. Nathan was being careful not to interfere when she was performing her police duties, but right now was an interstice. Others would assume that it was merely affection she was showing for him; her own awful fear and need of comfort was being masked.

“No,” she murmured. “This can't be happening. Real life is not like a science-fiction novel.” The words came out with a trembling moan. Tears filled her eyes. Nathan understood; just so long as no one else caught on to her weakness.

With all the chairs blocking the windows of the coffee shop, Natalie was beginning to feel like a caged animal with claustrophobia. “I'm going to go out on the deck and grab a few minutes’ breath of fresh air,” she told Nathan, disengaging. “You should stay here, and let me know the moment anything starts
coming unglued.” Her eyes flicked toward the lumberjack meaningfully.

Nathan nodded. “Please stay away from the rails,” he said. He placed his hand on her arm comfortingly, a small kindness that seemed huge to Natalie. Her feelings for Nathan were still deepening. He stirred her heart with his little ways as much as his large ways. She felt her tears coming again, but then stopped herself.

“You don't have to tell me that.” But of course he had been joking, in his sometimes ineffective way. “I'll stay right next to the coffee shop door. I just need a little fresh air to snap me out of this.”

But at the door she hesitated. Thunderheads were stacking up on the northern horizon. Loud boomings muttered over the ocean waves from that direction. More trouble brewing. Unless the storm caused the monster to go away.

She turned, glancing back at Nathan, changing her mind about going alone. She saw him nod, catching on immediately. Bless the man!

“I think I'll go up to the bridge and see how Captain Calamari and Rudolph are doing,” Nathan said.

“Don't go out there!” Bryan screamed. The five-year-old boy dropped his kaleidoscope and its glass shattered. Brenda and Bill turned around to see what the lumberjack would do next. Natalie thoughtfully evaluated the man's mental state. Could she afford to leave the coffee shop even briefly? She decided to risk it, because not only did she need to get out of here for a while, she needed to know exactly what the situation was outside.

“Something's—out there,” Bryan repeated.

As if that were news! “We'll be out just for a minute,” Natalie said reassuringly.

“Don't go out there! I feel its presence. Walking death,” the lumberjack said, slurring his words as if he had been drinking something stronger than pop. An artery on the left side of his
neck visibly throbbed. Brenda and Bill looked at him with impatience and irritation.

“Why not keep your mouth shut,” Bill said. Bryan looked at Bill and kept quiet. The lumberjack might have weighed twice what the waiter did, but now had none of the youngster's poise. Natalie realized that the business with the chairs had helped Bill recover confidence in the safety of his bastion.

The other teenager laughed, but then decided it was best to be quiet. The little boy began to cry. Yes, she had to leave now—and return soon. Before things came apart.

Natalie opened the door to the coffee shop, letting in a gust of cold wind that spat drops of rain on the linoleum floor. Various gray mists rose off from the sea in big steamy columns, enclosing the occupants of the coffee shop in their own private world. The rumbles of the approaching storm cooled the air a few degrees.

The sea grew choppy and seemed to be in the hands of demons.