Medusa's Web (16 page)

Maybe Aunt Amity was wrong, he thought; maybe Paul and Charlene steal a different film can, by mistake, or a decoy—it doesn't seem they ever actually
looked
at it—and maybe the exorcism film stays in this house.

“Thank you,” Scott said. “And if you move, leave it there—”

And then he jerked spasmodically, for he had fallen facedown in cold mud; he rolled over, gasping and spitting. Had Valentino knocked him down? All he could see was darkness stippled with meaningless spots of light. His arms and legs and teeth ached, and he wondered dazedly if he had somehow tumbled down the slope in
Valentino's front yard. His bare legs shivered in a chilly wind and his heart was thudding rapidly in his chest.

Scott sat up and raised a hand to his face, then flinched at a branching pale shape that suddenly filled his vision; but when he spasmodically thrust his hand toward it, the thing shrank, and he knew the shape was only his own hand.

He had fallen out of the vision. He still couldn't see clearly, but he slapped at his chest and legs and realized that he was wearing only what he'd worn to bed, a T-shirt and jockey shorts; and when he tried to stand up, his bare toes slid through mud and cold, wet grass.

Gasping with panic, nearly sobbing, Scott rubbed his eyes fiercely. I need to
see,
he thought. Where in hell
am
I? The cold wind seemed to burn his bare arms and legs.

He opened his eyes and forced himself to identify the depthless shapes. A patch of light wiggled as he shook his head; too low to be a streetlight, he thought, it's probably a light on a house. He tilted his head back and saw a glowing half disk—the moon, surely. And when he leaned farther back, the edge of blackness cut off more of the disk. I'm next to a fence or low wall, he thought, and it's partly blocking my view of the moon.

He reached out toward the obstruction, and even as his fingers felt the small flat pieces of stone, he was able to make out the curling dark patterns on the Medusa wall.

I'm still at Caveat—thank God, he thought.

He struggled to his feet, shivering in the wind and wincing at the pains in his legs and back, and he stumbled toward the light that he now recognized as the light over the back door. The knob turned—the door was blessedly unlocked. He hurried inside and exhaled in relief at the slightly warmer, still air of the laundry room.

Scott limped into the dark hall and then painfully made his way up the stairs, stepping on the edges of each tread to keep it from squeaking. He wondered if Natacha, in his body, had bothered to
be quiet when she descended these stairs a few minutes ago; at least there was no sound now of anyone awake.

Back in his unlit room at last, and without waking Madeline, he slid his legs under the covers and slowly leaned back, inhaling through clenched teeth at the pain in his back and shoulders. He glanced at the open window and was glad that Natacha had apparently not felt suicidal. Of course the fall probably wouldn't have been fatal—he would simply have come back to find himself sitting in the planter below, freezing in his underwear, probably with a compound fracture or two.

As he lowered his head to the pillow, Scott let his arms relax—and then he was shivering and had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering. He knew he was in his bed, but the stark, insistent memory of having only moments ago awakened cold and nearly naked in the mud, in the middle of the night, seemed too likely not to be a memory at all—what if he was still out there, and had only shut his eyes and imagined returning to his bed?

He gripped the sheet under him tightly enough to make his abused elbows and shoulders throb. I am in my bed, he thought. His forehead was chilly with relief. But I
cannot
do that again. I
will
not. There's some way to free Madeline without using the exorcism film, even if it still exists—there must be. Natacha said it's full of images of the big spider.
Someone has to
watch
the film,
Valentino had said,
and I think it would kill that person.

I can't possibly sleep, Scott thought.

The bottle under the mattress, which had held no attraction for him a few minutes ago, now seemed to radiate a warm oblivion; and he subjected his knees and shoulders to more agony as he hunched out of bed and slid a hand under the mattress. He pulled out the bottle, and he was compensated for the pain in his wrist, as he unscrewed the cap, by the first aromatic, warming mouthful.

He climbed back into bed, carefully so as not to spill any, and
leaned back against the headboard for another profoundly comforting swallow. It was the taste of the golden past, of books on the shelves and his parents in the farther room, of a dimly heard Harry James and Kitty Kallen song playing on their stereo. He took another sip and, finally, relaxed.

MIDMORNING SUNLIGHT REFLECTING OFF
the bare floor shone on the plaster ceiling, and Scott was peering through watering eyes as he rolled out of bed, sure that he was about to vomit; but he paused, leaning against the wall beside the open window, and after a few seconds the chilly air blowing in on his sweaty face emphasized his headache instead. He looked back at the disordered bed and the bottle on the floor, and he felt old and exhausted and corrupt. He had only begun to try to dismiss the memories of last night as dreams, when he saw the dried mud stains on his bare feet.

I will not go to that house where Valentino was, he told himself firmly; I can clearly sense what direction it's in, but I will not go there. He glanced down again at his blackened feet, and shuddered. I am through with spiders.

There must be another way to get Madeline out of the web, out of Aunt Amity's posthumous domination. He sighed from the bottom of his lungs and began wearily pulling on his jeans and a flannel shirt.

The orange couch and the heraldic wet bar, he thought. What
did
Aunt Amity do with all of Mom and Dad's stuff? They had some specific fact-in-context to blackmail Aunt Amity with, and if I can
find out what that was, then maybe it's something I can use to banish her ghost, and nobody need ever look behind the red board in the attic of that house out there. To hell with Taylor and Valentino and that whole crowd. That whole dead and buried crowd.

Scott squinted against the brightness at his black plastic bag on the shelf beside his remaining dried-out cigarettes, but dreaded the effort of digging through its contents to try to find clean socks, and he pulled on yesterday's, then slid his feet into his shoes and clumsily tied them. Then he made the effort to pick up the bourbon bottle and shove it back under the mattress next to the manila envelope.

He looked through the open connecting door, but Madeline's bed was empty and neatly made up. God knew what time it was. He stepped softly into the hall and down the stairs.

From the dining room he heard the tinkling of a spoon stirring coffee in a ceramic cup, and someone closed a cupboard in the kitchen beyond, so he stole to the right from the base of the stairs, through the laundry room—scuffing aside bits of dry mud that were too clearly footprints—and lifted a dusty key ring from a hook and sidled out the back door.

He didn't even glance toward the spot by the Medusa wall where he had awakened last night, but hurried past the kitchen windows to the driveway and the long west lawn. Nobody opened the kitchen door to call after him.

The walk out to the road that led up to the old garages stretched his cramped thigh muscles, and the cold, soil-scented breeze in his nostrils made his headache recede.

When he got to the top of the hill, where the narrow road curved to the right just short of the tall eucalyptus trees that marked the north end of the property, he was surprised to see a new white Saturn parked sideways in front of the first of the row of four neglected garages. Morning sunlight glinted on the bumper chrome.

And as he paused, wondering if a neighbor from over on the Gower Street side was using this seldom-visited pavement for extra
parking, a woman stood up from behind the Saturn, staring at the door of the garage in front of her. She was tall and slim, in faded jeans and an untucked brown flannel shirt, and a pair of sunglasses was pushed back on her short blond hair. She was holding a hacksaw.

It wasn't until she noticed him standing there and jumped in surprise that he recognized her.

“Louise!” he said hoarsely. The breeze in his face suddenly seemed several degrees colder.

After a stiff pause, “Doctor Scott!” she said. It chilled him further—her reply had turned this moment into a grotesque reenactment of a bit of dialogue from
The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
a movie the two of them had seen together many times, fifteen years or more ago.

Helplessly going along in mimicking the remembered exchange, he repeated, “Louise!”

“Doctor Scott!” she said again, still following the movie's script. It was clear that she was staving off the moment in which she would have to explain why she was evidently breaking into one of the garages.

Suddenly very tired, and careless of his uncombed and unshaven appearance, Scott interjected, “You don't need the saw. I've got a key.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Oh. Good. The saw was only
polishing
the bar of your damn padlock.” She gave him a crooked grin. “They said you all never come up here. And anyway I figured I'd hear a car. I didn't expect somebody to
walk
up.”

“It's hardened steel.” He stepped forward across the cracked asphalt, wincing at a reviving pain in his knee. “Who said?”

“I bet you don't look as bad as this all the time, right?”

“Debatable.” He lowered himself carefully onto one knee and lifted the padlock. One side of the U-bar was indeed shinier where the hacksaw teeth had skated impotently back and forth over it. He fitted the key into the lock and the bar sprang open.

Still on one knee, he peered up at her. “Who said?”

Her smile was glassy. “Oh—people paying me.”

He stood up. “People who pay you want something out of our garages?” His shoulders were nearly twitching with the reflex to take her into his arms, but it certainly didn't sound as if she had come back into his life to reestablish their relationship. He wished he'd brought a pack of cigarettes—and possibly the Wild Turkey bottle too.

“I tried to tell you about it yesterday, Scott. I went to the Ravenna Apartments, and the gentleman there said you were staying here for a week, and when I came here, a woman said you weren't home. But I waited on the street, and after a while I saw you taking off on your bike. That's the same bike as before, isn't it? So I followed you. You went to the Ross for Less on Alvarado. Did you know there was a man in a white Chevy Blazer following you?”

Her hair was shorter than it had been fifteen years ago, backlit now by the sun. He squinted at her, trying to read her expression; all he could conclude was that she was very embarrassed . . . and, behind that, it occurred to him, scared.

“No,” he said, “I didn't know about the Chevy Blazer.” He wondered if it was true.

“I was—” he paused, then went on, “yesterday I was glad to hear that you were trying to get in touch with me.” He bent down and gripped the handle at the bottom of the wooden door and hauled upward; he felt as if he was dislocating his shoulder, but the door rocked up, squeaking, to its overhead horizontal position.

Inside, standing lamps and ornate tables and chairs were stacked to the low ceiling and nearly to the edge of the cement floor. It was furniture that had been stored in the apiary when he had lived at Caveat, stashed here sometime after he had moved out.

He turned to Louise; she had stepped closer, and the sun was on her face. It was thinner now, and there were new lines under her pale blue eyes and in her cheeks, and before she turned hastily away he noticed a spot of red beside the iris of her left eye.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I still wouldn't lie to you. I was going to tell you about it all.” She frowned. “You really do look like hell. But so do we all, these days.”

“There's nothing in here for me,” Scott said, nodding at the furniture in the garage. “Were you after a lamp? A set of chairs?”

“I don't think so. Unlock another one.”

He pulled the door back down and knelt to resecure the padlock. “That's the plan.”

“How's Madeline?” she asked as they walked to the next garage.

“Oh—same.”

“Ah.”

Louise had to get her hands under the edge of the door of the next garage and help him lift it; and he noticed an apparently constant tremor in her hands. The old wood groaned loudly, and dust sifted down from the door when they had worked it into the raised position.

Cobwebs were draped in diaphanous gray sheets over a white-painted desk and half a dozen cardboard boxes and, sure enough, the orange couch and the high mirrored cabinet that was the wet bar. The confined air had the rancid-oil smell of mildew, and Scott wondered if this roof leaked too.

He turned to Louise and raised his eyebrows in inquiry. He felt brittle and tense.

She shrugged and gave him a defiant look. “Maybe.”

“Me too.” He knelt on the asphalt and then just sat down and dragged one of the boxes closer. Louise leaned over him as he brushed dust off it.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “Uh . . . open it slow, Scott.”

Black widows? he thought. Rats? But he obediently took several seconds pulling the cardboard flaps up.

The box was packed with old paperback romances, and he pushed it away and slid another box in front of him. “You said you were going to tell me about it all. So tell me.”

“Ask me.”

Scott sat back. “What are you looking for here?”

At first he thought she wouldn't answer him—she was staring at him with an expression of sadness or pity—but finally she reached up and pulled the sunglasses free of her hair.

He waited, expecting her to put them on, then realized that the sunglasses were somehow related to his question. He rocked his head to get the sunglasses between him and the daylight, and he could see crossed ridges on the lenses. And he remembered Ariel's distorting glasses at dinner last night; and when Ariel had told Claimayne not to take advantage of old Rita's accidental viewing of the spider pattern in the broken window, Claimayne had said,
Your fault for not giving her your glasses.

Tears stood in Louise's eyes. “I used to think I was better than you, damn it.”

Scott's chest felt hollow. “So did I.”

She sniffed. “Probably I am anyway. But Scott—
give them the damn spider,
the big one, their Medusa, or tell them where it is!”

“I don't know where it is.”

She pursed her lips. “You almost do, though, don't you? And you know what I'm talking about. You've got clues people want. That Ross parking lot is where Taylor's apartment was! And you didn't go into Ross, you just looked around and then left! It changed everything when you went there yesterday. Until you did that, nobody really figured Amity Madden's weird old family had any line on the Medusa spider. They were following you and your sister and what's her name, Ariel, just to see if any of you . . . I don't know . . . were getting ready to leave the country, or consulted the police, or a Catholic priest, or went to see any of the other old-school spider addicts around town. A few days ago they . . . hired me as a consultant, since I knew—I'm one of the few people!—who knew you all. They wanted me to hang around and hear what you all had to say about your dead aunt. They even wanted me to pre
tend I still loved you. I told them they weren't paying me enough to lie to you.”

“I wish you had, actually. I'd have been easy to fool.”

“Oh, stop it. I was going to tell you about all that—it would have been kind of funny, and I was curious to see you again. And Madeline. But then you went to Taylor's place, and now there's red lights all over everybody's dashboards. I don't know what they've got other people doing, but they told me to try to find where your crazy aunt might have stored papers, and steal them if I could. They suggested these garages.” She spread her hands and smiled ruefully; her hands were still trembling. “And I figured if I got caught, you wouldn't call the cops on an old . . . friend of the family.”

“Who are these employers of yours?”

“I've only met one guy, though he says ‘we.' He hasn't told me his name. He's met me three times, at a Starbucks, and he pays me cash.” She went on defensively, “It's freelance; my real job is part-time teaching at USC.”

“How did they get in touch?”

“He called me on Tuesday, and I went to meet him. I think they've been keeping track of—spying on, really—all the longtime covert Hollywood spider addicts, for years, and your family is one of the oldest, and lately they're worried by some other crowd that's apparently been doing the same thing. Your man in the Blazer would be one of them.”

Scott shook his head as he brushed cobwebs and drifts of dust off the top of the box. “Why do they
want
the big spider?”

She was peering over his shoulder. “You think I'd
ask
?”

“I think you'd guess.”

“Well—yeah.” She put on the sunglasses. “What's in the box? Maybe I should look first.”

For several seconds Scott stared at the gleaming black ovals that hid her eyes; then, “I'll take my chances,” he said. He pried up the cardboard flaps.

At first he thought a reflected gleam of morning sunlight was lighting the litter of cards and papers in the box, but when he looked closer, he saw that they were somehow lit from underneath. Smothering an exclamation, he pushed the cards and folded sheets aside, and saw a metal flashlight lying in the bottom of the box, its bulb glowing brightly behind the glass lens.

Louise snatched off her rippled sunglasses and blinked at it. “Someone's already been,” she began in a loud voice—then, evidently remembering the dust and cobwebs that had covered the box, she finished weakly, “here?”

Scott thought of Madeline's view of old Hollywood yesterday. “I think it'll fade, since we moved the box from where it was sitting.”

“What? But there were cobwebs on it! Why would someone put a flashlight in it, still lit, and then—it can't have been later than last night, but how could they know—”

Scott interrupted, “If you hadn't seen the flashlight, when would you say this box was last touched?”

“Uh—twenty years ago!”

“Close. Twenty-
three
years ago. 1992. I'm pretty sure that's when this box was last closed. Like I say, the flashlight will fade.”