Medusa's Web

  Scott shook his head, horrified. “Why on earth were you down there, by the river?”

  “You think I wanted to go there? There’s a shop that caters to spiderbits—that’s spider users who have quit, and I’m one. It’s where I got those glasses yesterday; they sell stuff to help insulate you from spiders. The shop moves around a lot, because wheelbugs love to find spiderbits—people like me, with lots of accumulated spider experiences to hijack. You have to go to a website and enter a password to see where the shop is each day, and today the site said the shop was down there on East Sixth. I wanted to at least get some flash bangs—you know what those are? Ah, I didn’t. So I stole some money Claimayne had hidden in the library, and went there, but I guess the site got hacked by wheelbugs. Led me into a trap.”

  Scott was thinking of his parents’ threat to expose Claimayne’s mother, and possibly that Ostriker fellow too, to wheelbugs. “I’m glad I followed you.”

  “Me too. Why did you follow me?”

  “Back at Caveat, you sounded like . . . like you were going to run away and never come back, or even kill yourself.”

  She shrugged. “We’ll never know now. But any longtime spider user, like Claimayne, or his mother, or me, is an unending feast for a wheelbug. He can opt out of reality, live in all our past or future visions—well, apparently they’re all past these days. Still. It would be like living forever in a virtual reality game.”

  “Some of the visions might be a bit unpleasant.”

  “But forever. That outweighs unpleasant.”

  Scott signaled the waiter and ordered a club soda. “You can have mine too,” he said, pushing his wineglass toward Ariel.

  “Back on the wagon?”

  “For now. Listen, do you think a wheelbug can pull that trick on somebody even after the wheelbug’s dead?”

  “Wow. That’s a terrible thought. But . . . yeah, I suppose. After all, he’s not dead in the strip of time he imposes on the unlucky person who does the after, the person who eventually consummates the quickening of the dirty spider. So yeah, the wheelbug would be alive in the poor sucker’s head, even though he’d be dead out in the real world.”

  “Quickening! What, are the spiders alive?”

  “Claimayne says they are. So . . . do you know of some dead wheelbug who’s trying to eat a living person’s memories?” Suddenly her eyes were wide. “Last night, during the movie! It wasn’t just the scrambled house, working on Madeline?”

  “No. Aunt Amity left a spider for each of us, and we both looked at them, but she seems to have got into Madeline’s mind. And she’s dug in there, like you said.”

  “But Madeline was never any kind of—oh. When you were kids. Claimayne says you both looked at what he calls the big spider. The Medusa.”

  “Yes. We did.”

  “That would definitely be a forever feast.” Ariel shuddered visibly, then drained her own glass and snatched up Scott’s. “It’ll destroy Madeline.”

  “There’s got to be a way to . . . yank Aunt Amity out of my sister’s head.”

  “How? You can’t kill spiders.”

  A passing patron grinned up at her from the lower level and audibly stamped his foot on the red linoleum in helpful suggestion.

  “Maybe you can,” said Scott. He looked at the glass of wine in Ariel’s hand, then looked away. “There’s, or there was at one time, an exorcism.”

  “There is? An exorcism for the spiders? Do you know how to do it?”

  “Yeah. It’s a film. You watch it, and it banishes the Medusa spider, allegedly, and all the other spiders too. But I have it on good authority that the movie probably kills the viewer.”

  Ariel took a sip of his wine and carefully set the glass down on the tablecloth. “That’s no good, then.”

  “It’s certainly not very good.” God help me, thought Scott. “When we’re done here,” he said slowly, “there’s a stop we’ve got to make before we head back to Caveat.”

  I’ll hide the film in this house, Valentino had said, for you to find, in your day. And Scott had told him, if you move, leave it there . . .

  She eyed him cautiously. “Where?”

  He looked out over the rail, over the booths and lamps and hanging bottles, not seeing them. “I don’t know exactly, but—it’s north of here, and close by.”

  AT THE TOP OF Whitley Avenue, north of Franklin, they had to double back downhill and take Whitley Terrace north, but that led them to a narrow street with tall white houses among lush cypresses and pines to the left, and nothing to the right but an ivy-covered brown cinder-block freeway wall beyond a low hedge. Widely spaced cypresses and antique-looking streetlamps stood up along the hedge. The westering sun threw long shadows down the pavement.

  Scott braked the motorcycle to a halt at the curb and stared at the wall while the engine chugged in neutral.

  “The houses are on the other side of the street,” ventured Ariel, sitting behind him.

  He turned to look that way and felt the hairs standing up on his arms—behind an iron railing and up a grassy slope was a two- or three-story Spanish-style house that he now recognized. It had been across the street from Valentino’s house, in the spider vision he’d had last night.

  To his instant shame, the first thing Scott felt was relief. The place where Valentino’s house had stood—where the Taylor exorcism film had probably once been hidden behind a red board in the attic—was now a volume of turbulent air over the lanes of the 101 Freeway on the other side of the wall.

  “The house was right there,” he said, facing the wall again and pointing at it.

  “Not lately,” said Ariel. “The freeway’s been there since . . . before you were born. Before Claimayne was born.”

  “I know.” Scott trod the gear shift into first gear. “This was in the 1920s.”

  Ariel shivered on the seat behind him. “I’m freezing. We’d better be heading back to C-Caveat. I’ve got calls to make, and Claimayne will be mad if sinners date.” She laughed awkwardly. “Two glasses of wine! I mean if dinner’s late.”

  Scott nodded and let out the bent clutch lever.

  CHAPTER 21

  SCOTT PULLED OPEN THE kitchen door, his hand tingling and almost numb from having gripped and twisted the motorcycle’s throttle so much that afternoon, and Madeline stood up from the kitchen table and smiled to see Ariel.

  “We were worried about you,” she said.

  Scott noticed that Ariel was blinking back tears. “You poor sweet child,” she said, and hurried out of the room.

  Madeline watched her until the dining-room door swung closed, then turned to her brother. “What’s with her?”

  “She’s got to call the cops, report her car stolen.” Scott ran his fingers through his wind-disordered hair. “It wasn’t stolen, but some bad guys tried to grab her down by the Sixth Street bridge and she had to abandon it, and she’s scared they might still be there, waiting for her. I guess I’m cooking dinner.”

  “Did you rescue her? Her skirt was torn. You’re wearing her sunglasses.”

  “Oh. Yes.” He took off the sunglasses and laid them on the table. “And she doesn’t hate us anymore, or not at the moment.”

  Scott found bacon and cheddar cheese in the refrigerator, and a loaf of sourdough bread and a net of onions on the counter, and as he cooked he described to his sister the encounter with the pickup trucks and the escape along the river embankment and onto the freeway. Within half an hour he had fried the bacon, browned sliced onions in the bacon grease, laid it all on slices of cheese on the bread, and then fried up four big, somewhat greasy sandwiches. As he lifted them onto plates with a spatula, he heard the booming and squealing of Claimayne’s elevator.

  “That smells wonderful,” said Ariel, stepping into the kitchen from the dining room. She had changed into gray woolen trousers, and her silver pendant hung outside a red checked flannel shirt.

  “It must have been scary,” said Madeline, “riding along that slanted cement by the river.
”

  Ariel cocked her head. “That was one scary part,” she agreed.

  “You two wash your hands now,” said Madeline, and she stepped away into the dining room.

  Scott and Ariel exchanged a puzzled glance. “I just did,” said Ariel.

  “Me too. I guess I—”

  They were interrupted by a shout from Claimayne, and each of them hastily picked up two plates and hurried after Madeline.

  The lights weren’t on yet in the dining room, and the jacaranda trees glowed in the sunset light outside, beyond the tall open windows. Claimayne’s wheelchair was at its customary spot on the south side of the dining table, but Madeline was now sitting at the head of the table. Stepping around Claimayne to set down the plates he was carrying, Scott saw that they were glaring at each other.

  “She’s . . . presuming to sit at my mother’s place!”

  “Madeline,” said Scott, but she ignored him.

  Claimayne leaned forward and snarled, “What are you doing in my mother’s chair?”

  Madeline twitched, and then blinked in evident bewilderment at her angry cousin. “I . . . don’t know,” she said wonderingly. She hastily got up and walked around to her usual chair.

  Claimayne slumped back as Ariel sat down next to him and Scott took his place on the other side of the table, beside Madeline. Scott noticed that Claimayne had a long brown-paper-wrapped package laid across the arms of his wheelchair.

  “What have we here,” Claimayne said, finally glancing down at his plate. “Cholesterol sandwiches. You know I have a bad heart.” He looked at Madeline and then at Scott, taking a deep breath as he spread his hands on the table. “So who is Adrian Ostriker? Some old friend of my mother’s? You two didn’t stay long.”

  Scott didn’t look at Madeline. Claimayne himself must be in touch with the people who hired Louise to spy on us, he thought. “No,” he said. “He wasn’t . . . friendly.”

  “Ah. And how is poor old Genod these days?”

  “Old,” said Scott.

  “You’re supposed to send him a check,” added Madeline. “A thousand dollars. Every month. Your mother did.”

  “Did he tell you about his relationship with Ava Gardner?” When Madeline nodded, Claimayne went on, “Did he tell you the extent of it? Hah? Genod was what they call best boy—that’s the assistant gaffer, lighting technician—on a movie called Ride, Vaquero! in 1952. One time on the set, Genod yawned, and Ava Gardner saw him do it, and she yawned too.”

  Madeline cocked her head, clearly expecting more to the story.

  “That was the entirety of it,” said Claimayne. He shifted to peer at Ariel. “And where did you and Scott get to, once you were on the freeway, with no helmets?”

  Ariel smiled at him. “You called that Ferdalisi guy back, didn’t you?” When he shrugged, she went on, “You have untrustworthy friends. Be careful. Scott and I had lunch at Miceli’s.”

  “All happy family again, hah?” Claimayne sat back. “And so you’re not hungry and you cook me up this shit? I won’t eat it.” He pushed his plate away.

  Ariel rolled her eyes. “I could fix you something else.”

  “I’ll keep it from going to waste,” said Madeline, reaching for the plate.

  “No you won’t, curiosa,” Claimayne said to her, tugging the plate back. He was trembling, and a tight smile twitched at his smooth cheeks. “Maybe somebody else might want it, turnabout being fair play.”

  He thrust a hand into the pocket of his dressing gown and pulled out a folded slip of paper; Scott noticed the two words of his own mother’s handwriting on it in the moment before Claimayne opened it and stared at it, and he pushed his chair back with a smothered exclamation—but Claimayne’s hand had already dropped limply to the table, and his face was expressionless, his lower lip sagging.

  Scott froze, half standing up.

  Ariel stared uncertainly at Claimayne, then at Scott.

  “What?” said Madeline in the silence.

  Claimayne abruptly swiveled his head and gaped at the faces around the table. His pale hands rose up in front of his face now, the paper falling away from his pale fingers.

  “This isn’t me!” The voice that rattled out of his throat was shrill. Claimayne’s eyes were wide as he looked from Scott to Madeline to Ariel. “Who are you?” His hands slapped his chest. “Who is this?”

  “Mom,” said Scott hoarsely as sweat broke out on his forehead, “I’m Scott, this is Madeline—we—”

  Ariel’s teeth were bared, and she was squinting as if against a bright light.

  “Scott,” came the voice out of Claimayne’s mouth, “is it you? You’re old, what did we—oh Jesus, am I dead?”

  “I love you, Mom!” called Madeline. Her napkin was crumpled tightly in her fist.

  Ariel was whispering, “Motherfucker, you motherfucker . . .”

  Claimayne’s bald head had rocked back, his eyes scanning the cobwebby beams far overhead. “Still at Caveat . . . ? It didn’t work, and I’m dead?” The head swung down to look at the hall doorway. “God, is my Arthur dead too?” Scott saw tears spurt from Claimayne’s eyes, and more trickled down his twitching cheeks. The gaze swung back to Scott and Madeline. “What did we do, what did we do to you . . .”

  “We,” said Scott, staring into the face that was Claimayne’s and forcing the words out, “love you, Mom.” He made himself go further: “I love you.”

  “Are you . . . please . . . happy?”

  Claimayne’s head sagged forward then and he seemed to snore.

  “Mom!” yelled Scott, getting up and starting around the table, but Claimayne held up a hand.

  “Wait,” Claimayne whispered. He inhaled deeply and leaned back in his wheelchair, and he stared unseeingly toward the wall. “Wait.”

  The air seemed to Scott to be ringing like a struck piano. Madeline was sobbing quietly into her napkin.

  “It’s you again, Claimayne,” said Ariel, “isn’t it?” When he nodded, she went on, quietly, “You’re worse than contemptible. I hope you die, soon, stinking, shitting yourself and choking on your own vomit.”

  Scott was standing at the hallway end of the table, his fists clenched.

  Claimayne waved clumsily across the table in Madeline’s direction. “Only fair. Balancing the scales. She looked at one of my mother’s.” He fumbled at the long package on his lap, obviously not able to see clearly yet, and he lifted it and let it clunk onto the table.

  “Speaking of my mother,” he said in a nearly conversational tone, “she gave this to your father, but he didn’t want it. You remember? It’s time to clear all old debts.” He tore at the brown paper impatiently. “Damn, why did I tape it?”

  At last he had pulled all the paper away, and Scott saw what it had concealed: a three-foot length of two-by-four, the last foot wrapped in tan carpeting.

  “Christmas,” said Madeline weakly, “1991.”

  “That’s right, child,” said Claimayne, nodding. He picked up his napkin and wiped the tears from his face. “A week after she had the carpeting—this carpeting,” he said, dropping the napkin in order to lift the piece of wood, “—removed from the stairs.” He could see in perspective now, for he was staring directly at Scott. “Do you know where my mother got this thing?”

  Scott let out the breath he’d been holding. “No, Claimayne.”

  “She found it under your parents’ bed. Your father was planning to beat my mother to death with it because she had turned his blackmail scheme back on him. And then he was going to push her body down the stairs.” Claimayne’s hand ran up the wood and slid over the carpeting. “He took this piece of carpet from one of the risers, so that his . . . murderous blows would seem to have resulted from impacts with the stairs.” He laid the piece of wood down and turned to Ariel. “Actually, if you could fix me a bowl of tomato soup . . .”

  “For the sake of your rancid soul, I pray you’re insane,” she said, pushing her chair back and standing up.

  She started towar
d the hall doorway. Scott caught Madeline’s eye and rocked his head that way, and Madeline pushed back her chair and stood up.

  As his three cousins left the dining room, Claimayne called, “Have a shot of that Wild Turkey under the mattress, Scott, it’ll relax you.”

  ARIEL DIDN’T STOP AT the second-floor landing. “The apiary,” she said, continuing up the stairs. “He won’t have put microphones there.”

  Madeline was hiccuping as she yanked herself up each step by pulling on the banister. “I’m glad you—hic—told her you love her, Scott.”

  “I don’t know that I do,” Scott said, watching and ready to catch her if she missed her next banister grab. His heart was still pounding. “I suppose I should; and it seemed like the right thing to say.”

  “Do you think—hic—that was true? About our father wanting to kill Aunt—hic—Amity? I hate hiccups.”

  “Yes. I hope Mom didn’t know.”

  Madeline hiked herself up another couple of steps. “Have you really got a—hic—bottle of Wild Turkey under your mattress?”

  “What’s left of one.”

  At the top of the stairs they clattered along the hallway and into the apiary, and Ariel slid the heavy door shut, though they would certainly hear Claimayne’s elevator if he were to come upstairs after them. Scott clicked on the overhead lightbulb.

  The big television screen, black now, still faced the two dozen mismatched chairs, and windows visible between the legs of stacked tables along the walls let in the apricot glow of sunset. Scott thought he still caught a whiff of old pizza.