The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1) Read online

  “Fine with me,” Ralph said. He appeared helpless, lost.

  “Great. We can work out the scheduling later. It might not even be necessary depending on how the screening test comes out, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.”

  Ralph didn’t respond.

  The doctor stood there a moment, basking in the awkward silence. “Well, at any rate, you three take it easy. If you need anything, you have the button. But don’t get too comfortable, you still have some paperwork to do. Now’s your last chance to bicker over names, after all.”

  May looked up, the thought having slipped her mind. They had, of course, considered names before. They’d settled on Layla if it was a girl and Jackson if it was a boy. Those names, however, no longer fit such a miraculously unique child. What name could befit such a miracle? When the tiny creature in her arms stirred, May once again forgot the matter altogether and resumed speaking in tongues to their half-awake daughter. Beside her, Ralph sat in silence, staring off into space.

  In another part of the state, the angry shriek of a telephone broke the silence of the Friday morning.

  Good God, Kyle Rogers thought. Who could be calling at this hour? Sitting in the black leather chair in his study, feet resting on the surface of his desk, he had almost fallen asleep while looking over the latest revision of an article from the JOA. The enthralling piece of literature in question was entitled Salticidae of the Pacific Islands. II. Distribution of Nine Genera, With Descriptions of Eleven New Species by James Berry, Joseph Scatty, and Jerzy Proszynski. The article, while mercifully short, was no less mind-numbing than any other he’d been arm-cranked into the peer review process for.

  The lamp of his desk clock told him it was almost one in the morning. And the phone was ringing. He had half a mind to ignore it. There wasn’t anyone on the planet he liked enough to talk to at this time of night. On the other hand, the phone was an excuse that led away from Berry et al. He pulled his legs off their desk-bound perch and answered right before the fourth ring. “Hello?”

  “Kyyyyle!” came a woman’s singing voice.

  His heart sank. “Hi, May,” he said through his teeth. Good ol’ May Wolf, the Wolf of Chamberlain, The Hound of the Commons. But no, not anymore. She was May Warren, now. What an appropriate name, he thought bitterly. The wolf in the warren, ravens overhead.

  As always, he’d been on the verge of forgetting May and their time at Chamberlain when out came the shining sun to burn away the fog he yearned to hide beneath. If there was one person in the whole world he had no interest in talking to right now—or ever—it was her.

  “How’ve you beeeen?” the woman said. She sounded drunk.

  “Same as always.” He didn’t bother to return the question. “What do you want?”

  “Oh, don’t be so distant! Maybe I just wanted to call and catch up!”

  “At one in the morning.”

  She giggled, filling Kyle with a cocktail of loathing and longing. “You’re still a night owl, aren’t you? Some things never change.”

  “If you only called for small talk then I don’t have time for it. I have work to do.”

  “At one in the morning.”

  “Yeah. I’m busy.” This had to be God’s way of punishing him for his sloth. Passive-aggressive bastard.

  “Well, I’m sure you’re not so busy that you can’t take a short break! How long has it been, anyway? Oh hey, hey, question: are you still doing your spiderography?”

  He didn’t even know where to start correcting her. Forsaking that option, he drew a razor-thin breath through his teeth. “Yeah, I’m still in arachnology. What are you doing?” Hypothetical question; she was probably still writing poems for pamphlets or some other crap while Ralph supported her with his corporate programmer’s salary.

  May, however, must have misunderstood the question. “I’m at the hospital. Ralph and I just had our little girl!”

  Despite his disconnection, Kyle couldn’t stop himself from biting his tongue. Well congratu-fucking-lations, he wanted to growl. I’m so happy for you. Did you call just to mock me?

  May giggled again. “But there’s this teensy little detail. She has these, like, spider legs, or something like that.”

  Kyle was quiet, listening for the punchline.

  “You there, Kyle?”

  “I’m here, but I don’t know why. What’s the joke?”

  “Joke?” Another small fit of laughter on the other side. “No joke, just a bundle of love and joy!”

  Maybe she really is drunk, he thought.

  “So, here’s what I want from you, Ky-uhl.” The way she rolled his name brought back memories he’d buried under twelve years of ambivalent gravel. “We need a clever name for her.”

  Kyle sighed. What the hell is this? Spider legs? Clever name? And then the light went on, and her intent was obvious: she was trying to get a name for another of her stupid stories or something-or-others that she was writing. She’d sometimes come to him for ideas back at Chamberlain. Some things never change, his mind echoed.

  His stomach rolled. He didn’t want to talk to her at all, and helping with her projects was only going to encourage her to keep bothering him. Or worse yet, encourage her to continue thinking of him as a friend. But if he didn’t help her, she was going to keep hounding him and badgering him until he gave in and she got what she wanted anyway. That had, after all, been the origin of the appellation the Wolf of Chamberlain.

  “So you just want a name?” he asked, his better judgment telling him to give in and hope she’d leave him alone once and for all.

  “Yuh-huh, if it does ya.”

  The simpler the better, he thought, again recalling the couplet her voice had summoned: Three miles in bedlam, Arachne weaves her thread. If there was a god of irony, it was laughing at him. “Name her Arachne.”

  “Arachne?” came May’s response. “Explain.”

  Christ, are you serious? he thought in disbelief. “Old Greek legend, arrogant mortal woman challenges Athena to a weaving contest, insults her, gets turned into a spider.”

  “Ohh, oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah! I remember you telling me about that before.” She took a deep, contemplative breath. “I don’t like it,” she said in a bored tone. “It’s too obvious. Not pretty enough.”

  “Fine, fine, let me see.” He drummed his fingernails over the hard wood of his desk. “You want a girl’s name?”

  “Well, ideally.” She giggled. Unthinkable though it was, he thought he detected a sense of humor in her voice. But it was probably his imagination. Or the gin.

  “Name her . . . ” He let his mind drift along the web of word associations, and after a moment it hit him. Clever names about spiders? Didn’t get any more fitting than the catalyst of his childhood love of arachnids: his uncle’s pet tarantula. “Name her Spinnerette,” he said.

  Another airy breath. “Explain?”

  “Web-spinning spiders use things called spinnerets to produce silk. Ette–E, T, T, E–is a common ending for girls’ names: Babette, Annette, Nanette, and so on.”

  “I hate all of those names. Pretty names don’t end in consonant sounds.”

  His jaw clenched. So why didn’t you complain before I explained it, then? Another sigh to calm his blood. “Then tack on an extra A. Spinneretta. Problem solved.”

  May hummed. “Spinneretta. Yeah, that has a nice, pretty taste to it. How do you spell that?”

  “Spin. Spinner. E, T, T, A. Got it?”

  “Uhh, I think so?”

  “So are we done then?” Under normal circumstances, he’d feel bad for being so curt. The trip down memory lane, however, made him want to vomit in fury.

  May laughed that infectious, bubbly laugh again, making his stomach turn bitter somersaults. “You must really want to get back to work, huh?”

  “I have a lot to do.”

  Another giggle. “Well, I’ll let ya go then. We’ll need to catch up soon, though!”

  “Yeah. Sooner or later.”

&nbs
p; “We’ll have to visit sometime so you can meet our little girl!”

  “Yeah. Definitely.” He had no intention of meeting her, sooner or later. Come to think of it, did she really just have a kid? She shouldn’t be working so soon. The nostalgic pain of worry came over him, stilling his anger toward the woman.

  “Thanks again, Ky-uhl! Bye-bye!”

  “Bye. Take care of yourself.” He clicked the receiver onto its charger and sighed. May always found a way to claw her way back into his mind. Why did he even bother trying to fight it?

  Because I have to, his brain answered. He turned his eyes back to the eighth page of Berry, Scatty, and Proszynski, but found himself unable to focus. Thanks to the ever-present shadow of May Wolf, memories of a happier time assaulted his mind.

  Chamberlain. The smell of the dormitories. The night sky stretching above those hills nestled far from the rest of the world. There was no hatred then, nor had there been any omens of a future alone. Only friendship and hope—hope for himself and for the girl they called the Hound. The aggressive, the wild, the overdue. Concerts on the green, library from dusk until dawn. The taste of coffee she’d poisoned with artificial sweetener. Those draft poems he’d find taped to the edge of his desk when he got back from his night classes. They were always works in progress that never failed to read like personal messages to him.

  Now, he had nothing. A bag of broken dreams, a tentative teaching position at Marlin Community College, peer reviewing the Journal of Arachnology. And the letter from earlier that year. That damned letter. It had been a job offer, an enormous research grant. A grant from Grantwood. What were the freaking odds? Where the hell else would a petty, vindictive God choose than the town Ralph and May had picked to lay their roots? Now, that letter sat unforgotten and sealed in the top drawer of his desk, an eternal memento of all Ralph had taken from him.

  Trying to shake the memories away, Kyle focused on reading the stark words of the article. To his dismay, he found those words sounded different in his head. They were familiar words, horrible and echoing. They were the last lines of the last poem written by the Wolf before she changed—before she was stolen from him.

  The wolf in the warren, ravens overhead

  Three miles in bedlam, Arachne weaves her thread

  Ralph excused himself as soon as May reached for the bedside phone to call Kyle. Leaving the semi-private room felt like coming up for air. He’d breached the surface of his dream-ocean. Out of sight, out of mind. But it wasn’t out of mind. The sight of his daughter’s legs wouldn’t leave his thoughts. What the hell was going on with this hospital? Not just the hospital, but May. She’d been given to such despair during the pregnancy that he’d thought even a common congenital disorder would’ve crushed her. She’s not a spider, he heard her saying again. She’s an angel. Nauseous and dizzy, he turned left down the corridor. Morton had gone left, and he needed to talk to that halfwit. Now.

  The halls were deserted. Last time he’d been out of the room, nurses and orderlies had been bustling about. That was hours ago. Now the staff was down to a skeleton crew, and the dim lighting of the corridor made everything feel imaginary. He made his way down the hall, eyes darting left and right at each intersection. Morton had probably gone back to his office. Even if he hadn’t, it was a sound place to begin searching.

  But he did indeed find the doctor in his office. Sidling past the empty reception area, Ralph’s eyes were fixed on the yellow-tinted light shining beyond Morton’s half-open door. The doctor sat at his desk, phone in hand, speaking in a hushed tone. Baring his teeth, Ralph marched right up to the door and barged in. Morton jumped in surprise, tongue frozen in mid-sentence. “Morton,” Ralph said, failing to mask his unease. “We need to talk. Now.”

  Doctor Morton looked like he’d seen a ghost. After a moment, his lips began to move again. “I’ll call you back in a moment, Mr. Clearwater.” He clacked the phone down into its cradle and took a shaky breath. “You’ll give me a heart attack if you make stomping into my office a habit, Mr. Warren.” He laughed a nervous laugh. A forced laugh.

  Ralph glared at him. “What am I supposed to do about her?”

  The doctor flashed him a pearly smile, also forced. “Oh, don’t worry. She’ll mostly recover in a few days. For a few weeks, you should make sure she doesn’t do anything too strenuous until—”

  “I’m talking about my daughter, you jackass!”

  He’d expected Morton to laugh that asinine little chuckle. Instead, his eyes hardened to distant beads of coal. “What is the problem, exactly?”

  Ralph’s tongue flapped as he tried to form words. He leaned over Morton’s desk and planted his fists on its surface. “I swear to God, you’re all lunatics. Do I have to spell this out for you? My daughter has spider legs! How am I supposed to . . . What’s normal about that? How is she going to live a normal life?” That’s it. He had to make it about her. He couldn’t let on that those legs creeped him out of his skin. “It’s just about the most ridiculous thing I’ve—”

  Morton’s teeth flashed again, but this time in a scowl. “And what do you expect me to do about it?”

  The anger in the doctor’s tone gave Ralph pause. He shook his head, the question throwing him off guard. “I don’t . . . I mean, there has to be something you can do, Morton. Couldn’t you, I don’t know, surgically remove them, or . . . ?”

  The cradled phone began to ring, but neither of the men moved or acknowledged it. It sounded like the cries of a bluejay being burned alive. Morton was silent for a moment. The look in his eyes grew more distant. When he spoke, his tone was low and measured. “I’m afraid that would be impossible. You’ve seen her move her legs, yes? Beneath her flesh, those legs connect directly to her spinal cord. If we were to remove them—a procedure I’m uncertain you could afford—we would cause irreparable damage to her nervous system. Would you really paralyze your daughter for life just to be rid of some unsightly growths?”

  Ralph sputtered, alarmed at the quiet indignation pointed at him. “It’s got nothing to do with unsightly! Do you think people are going to just accept her like this?”

  “Your wife seems to have accepted her. I thought she was the one with all these petty little reservations.”

  The cavern in Ralph’s gut deepened. That new vacancy began to seethe, and the incessant death-chirping of the phone put his teeth on edge. “I swear to God, Morton, if you’re trying to suggest that I’m being shallow about this . . . ”

  “I recommend you accept your daughter the way she is,” Morton said. “Don’t worry about what others think. You’d be surprised how far the definition of normal can stretch these days.”

  Ralph chewed his lip. Morton’s gaze held his, and the doctor’s rare sternness drained him of all hope. He turned around and stormed out of the office without a word of parting, leaving Morton to his damned phone call.

  Unsure where he was going, Ralph wandered the twilit hallways. He was lost, in a daze. Before he even realized it, he found himself heading to the bathroom to throw up or scream or something. He felt like he was going nuts. It was a dream—a nightmare. But as he laid his hand upon the men’s room door, he paused. The screaming thoughts in his head receded to a mere whisper. No. Not a nightmare. It felt suspiciously like a curse. He trembled as his lips formed the word, thoughts reignited into a black firestorm. A curse. Was it possible?

  He shook his head, unable to dispel the thought. Those born of the line of Golgotha are invariably cursed. He’d never believed a damn word his grandfather had told him before that very moment. The man had been a skeletal wreck from a lifetime of vice and loss, and whenever he spoke it was in riddles or eschatonic fragments. Ralph leaned against the door, feeling the cool wood against his forehead. Could the legendary curse of Golgotha, which had allegedly taken his sister and two brothers, really have existed? What were the chances the old man had actually predicted this? Slim to shit, Ralph thought with a poisonous hiss. Nothing but fairy tales and delirium. Fairy tales.
Delirium. He didn’t know if he was describing his grandfather or his own life. With a low sigh, he pushed open the bathroom door.

  The next week, the Warrens returned to the hospital for blood work and genetic testing. May’s test came back perfectly normal. Ralph’s came back genetically spider.

  May and Ralph went on to have two more children, just as miraculous as their first. As a result, the man named Kyle Rogers would, unknowingly, contribute two more names to the Warren family. To the boy born eighteen months after Spinneretta he gave the name Arthr, an amalgamation of the common name Arthur, whose pronunciation was preserved, and the word arthropod. Four and a half years thereafter, a stumped Kyle suggested Kara, which was not a pun besides its vague resemblance to the word carapace. Never failing to be impressed by his names, May thanked him each time and left him to wonder what she was using them for.

  With the birth of May and Ralph’s third child, the Warren brood was complete. Time moved on in its unerring march. And to the dead stars sleeping within A’vavel, the next ten years would pass in the blink of an eye.

  Chapter 2

  The Warren Brood

  Spinneretta always thought of the attic as a graveyard. It was dusty, crammed full of forgotten trinkets, and likely to be haunted. And as she stood at the end of the second-floor hallway, staring up the ladder into the trapdoor’s even surface, she felt a pang of unease. With a small sigh, she climbed up to the trapdoor and wrestled with the handle. Though the door was sticky from disuse, it sprang open with a loud pop. A flurry of dust billowed down from above, filling her sinuses and spiracles with the smell of wood. With a cough that almost became a sneeze, she stretched out the eight spider legs that grew from her back. They were slender, each an arm and a half in length when fully extended. Each bent along five articulated joints and was covered in lustrous black chitin plates. As the dust settled, she grappled the higher rungs of the ladder with her spider legs and resumed her climb.