“I think Aunt Amity killed our parents,” Scott said to Madeline. “And it looks like it might arguably have been self-defense.”
She hiccuped.
“That was twenty-something years ago,” said Ariel, sitting down in the same chair she’d occupied to watch the movie last night. “I believe Claimayne tried to kill me today.”
She told Scott and Madeline about coming across the spider in her dresser drawer, and confronting Claimayne and finding him with a revolver and the puzzling strips of foil.
“I think he hoped to occupy me and, while he was in my body, use that gun to shoot my head off.” Her voice had been strong at first but had wavered by the end of the sentence. She took a deep breath and let it out. “Apparent suicide,” she added.
“Why would he want you dead?” asked Madeline. She sat down beside Ariel, then bobbed on her chair as she smothered a hiccup.
“Because he knew, from the crazy glasses I had on at dinner last night, that I went to a shop—I told you about it, Scott—a shop where they sell counterspider things: warpy glasses, plexiglass for windows, tarantella cassettes—”
Scott cocked his head at that, but when Ariel paused and looked at him, he waved at her to go on.
“Anyway,” Ariel said, “Claimayne apparently saw it as communicating with the enemy. I think he’s worried about what I might have learned, or said; or might learn or say the next time I go there. He thinks I’m a spy, basically.” She shook her head. “I do wonder what the foil strips were for.”
“He was going to chew them,” said Scott, “while he was in your body. You’ve probably got fillings in your teeth, so it’d hurt—pain prolongs a spider vision.” He smiled crookedly at his sister. “Rudolph Valentino told me that last night.”
Madeline twisted around on her chair, staring up at him.
He sighed and sat down beside her. “I looked at a spider last night,” he began, “after we both went to bed . . .” And he told his sister and cousin about his talk with Valentino, and even about waking up out by the Medusa wall in the middle of the night, in his underwear. “That’s whose house I was looking for,” he told Ariel, “up Whitley. And the house is gone,” he added to Madeline. “The 101 Freeway is there now.”
“You didn’t tell him about me?” Madeline asked.
“He said to tell you that Natacha was grateful for your company, on that taxi ride to the hospital.” Ariel was shaking her head in bewilderment, but Scott held up his hand and went on, “Mainly I told him I wanted to exorcise the spiders and all their works, to free you from Aunt Amity.”
“But,” said Madeline, “that would . . . free me from any chance of finding him! Oh, Scott—you love me, but I’m glad the house is gone.”
“Why did you sit down in Aunt Amity’s chair, at dinner?” he asked.
“I . . . don’t remember doing that,” she admitted.
Ariel leaned forward. “Foil, fillings? Why would Claimayne want to prolong his occupation of me? It wouldn’t take more than a few seconds to have me walk to his room and pick up the gun.”
“I imagine,” Scott said slowly, “that he wanted enough time to climb you up that ladder onto the roof, before he pulled the trigger.”
Ariel gave him a horrified look. “Why?”
Scott shrugged. “Aunt Amity has been pretty active in this house, postmortem, typing a new novel—yeah, we’ll tell you about that too—and speaking through Madeline. Maybe Claimayne hoped that your violent death on the same spot where the old lady blew herself up would fragment and dilute her lingering aura, confuse her—”
“Make interference fringes in her waveform,” said Madeline.
“Uh, right,” agreed Scott.
“And I would have been stuck in Claimayne’s body while he did it,” said Ariel with a shudder, “probably handcuffed to the bed, and probably—” She suddenly sat back, her face stiff. “If,” she began, but her voice was weak; she coughed and went on, “if you wanted to prevent a, a lingering aura, or minimize it at least . . . a grenade, outside the confinement of the house and garden, would probably . . .” She leaned forward and looked across Madeline at Scott. “When Aunt Amity was climbing up onto the roof with the grenade last week—surely in pain from climbing with her bad foot!—Claimayne was locked in his room, yelling and crying. And for four days afterward he was totally bedridden. He missed the funeral.”
“Wow,” whispered Scott after a pause.
Madeline cleared her throat and said, “Could you hear what he was yelling, in his room?”
“No. Why?”
Madeline rocked her head. “I would have liked to know what Aunt Amity’s last words were.”
“I don’t know. She didn’t sound happy.”
“He must have been covered with bruises afterward,” said Madeline in an awed tone. “I had a bruise on my leg after Natacha got shot.”
“I guess it was worth it, to him,” said Ariel.
Scott wondered if Claimayne, in Aunt Amity’s body, had taken the Clara Bow umbrella with him up to the roof because it had been promised to Madeline instead of him.
“Um,” said Ariel cautiously to Madeline, “what was that about finding Rudolph Valentino?”
Madeline glanced at Scott; after a moment, he shrugged and nodded.
“I guess we trust you,” said Madeline. “Well—Scott and I found some spiders in an envelope when we were kids—”
“The ones your parents stole from Aunt Amity,” interrupted Ariel. “Claimayne told me about this. And you gave them back to her, but you had already looked at one called Ore-Ida Fries or something.” Scott and Madeline were both looking at her in alarm, and she went on, slowly and almost apologetically, “And he said that’s the big spider, the Medusa, and somebody’s going to look at it again, and that’s crumbling our local chronology—he made me remember that phrase.” She inhaled, then added, “He wants it, pretty bad.”
“He knows a lot,” said Madeline in an awed tone.
“. . . You were going to say, about Valentino?”
“Oh, right,” said Madeline. “When Scott and I looked at the big spider—it was like a million lives at once, all jerking us every which way—”
“Total nervous-system seizure,” said Ariel.
“Okay. And then in the worst of it—Scott didn’t experience this—a young man was there, outside of all the exploding scenes, and he came to me and pulled me out too. He led me into a quiet moonlit garden, and he comforted me, told me it wasn’t so bad, where he was. And last night Scott and I were looking at a book about Rudolph Valentino, and I recognized him.” She looked with mild defiance from one to the other. “And I won’t leave this house till I find my way back to him.”
“I, uh, think that’s death,” said Ariel. “Actually.”
“If he’s there, it won’t be so dreadful.”
“Gently into that raucous night,” muttered Scott. “Some great plan.”
Ariel shifted on her chair. “This is the old movie star you’re talking about, right? That Rudolph Valentino?”
Madeline and Scott both nodded.
“Okay.”
For several seconds none of them spoke or looked at one another.
Then Ariel slapped her hands on her thighs and smiled. “How would you two like to get cussed at and insulted?”
Madeline grimaced. “I couldn’t bear seeing Claimayne again tonight.”
“Not by him,” said Ariel cheerfully, “by me.”
“I thought you liked us again,” said Madeline.
“Oh, I do, sweetie—I always liked you, really. But this is to balance the books. I’ll be back in a minute.” She stood up and hurried to the door, pulled it open, and tapped away down the dark hall.
“I think something’s wrong with our whole family,” said Madeline seriously.
Scott exhaled in a long, diminishing whistle. “Hard to argue.” His throat tightened, and he was surprised to find that he was shivering, remembering their mother’s tormented voice grating out
of Claimayne’s mouth. “I hope Claimayne dies like Ariel said.”
Madeline glanced at him in evident surprise. “Why? He let us tell Mom we love her.”
“I didn’t want to tell her that. It was just—like putting an injured animal out of its misery.”
“Sometimes you gotta.”
Scott shifted in his chair and glanced behind him at the open door, wondering what Ariel was up to. “That box in the garage?—with our parents’ credit cards and driver’s licenses in it? Ariel put it there when she was ten. She found the stuff in the compost bin.”
“Oh,” said Madeline, nodding. “Oh.”
Then Ariel came hurrying back up the hall and stepped into the apiary and pulled the sliding door closed. She was smiling, but it was a tense smile.
In her hand was a folded slip of paper. “You guys know how the before-and-after effect of spiders works, right?” Then she visibly recalled Claimayne’s performance at dinner half an hour ago, and went on quickly, “This is a spider I looked at three days ago, on Tuesday night, just as you two arrived. Remember it? You met a me then who was cheerful and welcoming, right? Well, that was me from right now—and when I look at this, you’re going to get the reciprocal me, the me from that night. I’m afraid she’s going to be very rude.”
She dragged one of the chairs out of line and spun it to face Scott and Madeline.
“Uh,” said Scott, glancing at his sister, “why do it in front of us?”
“Because right here, with you two, is where I found myself when I looked at this spider on Tuesday night. Just like this—me sitting here, you two sitting there. It must have been right now.”
Which only means, thought Scott, that tonight you decided to do it in front of us. But he said, “That makes sense.”
Ariel nodded. “I apologize in advance, okay? This, what you’re about to see, is the old me—three days old.”
She flipped open the paper and stared at it almost hungrily; and her eyes unfocused and for several seconds she just stared blankly at the floor. Scott braced himself to catch her if she fell out of her chair.
But she stiffened, and when she looked up, she was scowling. “You two! What fucking day is it?” She glared around the room. “Why are you in here? It better not be more than the week—”
“It’s Friday night,” Scott told her.
“Three nights in your future,” put in Madeline.
Ariel spat on the floor, and both Scott and Madeline rocked back in surprise. “Four days from, from this,” Ariel went on, grimacing as she waved her hand in a circle, “we’ll have to fumigate the rooms in the apartments down there, burn the sheets—after a drunk and a bag lady stayed there—a couple of ghouls—grave-worms! And if you imagine you’re going to inherit this place—”
“Really, Ariel,” Scott interrupted loudly, “this is all unnecessary. We understand—”
“We don’t hold this against you,” said Madeline, eyeing her seated cousin with something like wonder.
“We’re not at odds,” added Scott. He was surprised to find that he was sweating.
“Liar! You pathetic—”
Scott stood up quickly, for Ariel’s eyes had half shut and she was swaying, and he caught her before she could topple forward. Holding her under her arms, he considered propping her back up in her chair, then just lowered her to the floor.
“I don’t think she’d have done it here,” said Madeline breathlessly, “with us, if she’d remembered how mean she was.”
Scott straightened up. “I wonder.” He was glad that the bag-lady remark didn’t seem to have upset his sister, though it had angered him for her sake. The drunk accusation hadn’t bothered him—it hadn’t been a prediction, after all, just a statement of presumed present fact.
Ariel had dropped the slip of paper, and he picked it up, glancing at it peripherally through nearly closed eyes just to be sure there really was an eight-limbed figure on it, and that Ariel hadn’t improvised her diatribe on the spot, with a blank piece of paper.
Ariel sat up, blinking; she fumbled at her chest until she gripped her silver gyroscope pendant, and she waved it in front of her face; her eyes didn’t follow its motion. “It worked,” she said hoarsely. “I saw you two on Tuesday night, all soaked in the rain. It was enchiladas, that first night, wasn’t it?”
Madeline nodded, then said, “Yes.”
Ariel let go of the pendant and flexed her hands, and seemed to see them clearly. She peered around, frowning, and saw the paper in Scott’s hand. She reached for it and he handed it to her, and she shakily tore it to pieces. “That spider’s done, consummated. And I’m never doing another. Was I very horrible? It’s been three days, I don’t exactly remember.”
“Yes,” said Scott, a little stiffly.
“Oh, Scott, don’t pay any attention to all that! It was me before . . . before I knew what was what.”
But you figured we ought to hear it, he thought.
“That’s okay,” said Madeline. “Do you want help getting up?”
“No, I—” Ariel folded her legs with some evident effort, but remained sitting on the floor. “Well, yes.”
Scott reached a hand down to her, and when she grasped his wrist, he pulled her erect; and she gripped his shoulder tightly.
“I’ll be all right in a minute,” she said. “I hate to leave you right after that . . . version of me, that old version, but I’m . . . I think I’m going to turn in.”
“I’ll help you down the stairs,” said Scott. “And I advise locking your bedroom door.”
Ariel nodded, though it made her wince. “And I’ll put a chair against it. And I’ve got my .32 with only one round used up.” She started to yawn, but that seemed to hurt too. Scott thought of old Genod Speas, all his life treasuring the memory of a yawn shared with Ava Gardner. Ariel went on, “And Claimayne will probably be busy making phone calls and planning for his party tomorrow night.”
“I’m going to retire too,” said Madeline, getting up.
Ariel told her, “I’m sorry I said all that awful stuff.”
“That’s okay. I don’t think you meant it, even then.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
Ariel leaned on Scott all the way down the hall, and her arm around his waist reminded him of their hectic ride on the motorcycle this afternoon. Her hair smelled faintly and not unpleasantly of diesel exhaust. In spite of his misgivings about her performance a few minutes ago, he found that he wanted to tip her face up and kiss her. He sighed deeply and resisted it.
It was a love note, damn it, she had said at Miceli’s. And he had said, I might have left Louise, if I’d seen it.
And I would have, he thought now.
At the stairs, she held on to the banister and put both feet on each step before attempting the next. Scott held her arm and Madeline held his, evidently meaning to belay both of them if Ariel should tumble.
Ariel was more steady in the dark second-floor hall, and trudged to her door without support.
“You two should sleep with the lights on,” she whispered. “Or better, don’t sleep at all.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Madeline.
Ariel shook her head and stepped into her room. When the door closed, Scott and Madeline could hear a chair being dragged across the floor inside.
“I’m going to put my blankets on your floor,” Scott told his sister as they walked back toward their own rooms, “and sleep there tonight. If you suddenly turn into Aunt Amity, I’ll slap you out of it.”
“That’s no good,” she said. “Pain makes it last longer. Sing me a lullaby.”
CHAPTER 22
MADELINE WAS BREATHING WITH reassuring evenness in the darkness, but lying on the floor reminded Scott too much of having come to his senses half naked in the garden last night.
He was wearing his jeans and shirt, and he stood up silently and stole through his own room and out into the dark hall. The house creaked in the night wind that rattled the window at the far end of th
e hall, and the air seemed to be full of ancient whispered questions.
He walked barefoot to the head of the stairs. Claimayne’s elevator had not yet banged up through the walls, and he wondered what the man might be up to, alone down in the dining room or the kitchen or his mother’s library.
Briefly he thought of tiptoeing down to spy on him—and he was ruefully surprised to discover that the idea scared him. What if Claimayne were sitting down there in the lightless dining room, staring at the entry hall? Scott imagined Claimayne holding the revolver Ariel had seen on his bedside table, but that actually seemed to make the idea more mundane; it was more disturbing to imagine Claimayne just sitting there with empty hands, staring, his bland face perhaps smiling.
Scott hurriedly turned back toward Madeline’s room, brushing his hand along the row of fixed doors that lined the south wall, and he automatically knocked at the one that had been salvaged from the Garden of Allah.
“Come in,” said a woman’s voice.
SCOTT FROZE, HIS HANDS tingling and his scalp suddenly tight.
“Doody?” said the voice. He heard footsteps on the other side of the door—but there was only plaster and brick on the other side of the door!—and then the knob turned and he stepped back as the door swung open, spreading radiance into the hallway.
He squinted against the new light at a short, trim, gray-haired woman in horn-rimmed glasses who was peering up at him, and then past him, in evident surprise. She was wearing tan slacks, and the fuzz of her green sweater was backlit by sunlight in a window behind her.
Scott’s breath was caught in his throat, and for a moment he couldn’t think at all, and simply stared.
The woman stepped back too, then whispered, apparently to herself, “Thou art a scholar—speak to it, Adelaida.” She met Scott’s wide-eyed gaze and gave him a forced smile, and waved into the room. “Do come in, O Spirit. And close the door behind you—I want to believe my sundeck and the pool are still out there.”
Scott was breathing again, deeply. This is what happened to Madeline two days ago, he told himself; Ariel said something about our local chronology crumbling. This will fade away in a minute or so.