Spider Light(100)
No! It would be the worst thing in the world! But she saw with horror that her hand had developed a life of its own; it reached out to the immense bolt and drew it back. It moved smoothly and almost soundlessly, and the door was open. It swung slightly inwards.
The first thing Maud was aware of was that the spider light was far thicker beyond the door than anywhere else in Latchkill. At first she was aware of a huge relief, because there was nothing so very terrible in here: a long table with plates and mugs on it, and a window high up in one wall. Maud frowned, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the light trickling through.
When they did she thrust a fist into her mouth to stop herself screaming, because what she saw was impossible and terrifying and must be a nightmare after all. Such things did not exist!
Drawn up to the long table were six or seven chairs, and seated on each of the chairs was a grotesque figure, bulky, repulsive, immense. Giant bodies and giant faces. Giant hands resting on giant knees, all sitting round their supper.
They had heard the door open, because the huge huge heads with the overhanging brows turned to look at her.
‘A new little girl,’ said one of them in a clogged kind of voice.
‘A little girl-nurse to see us,’ said another. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ It got up from the chair and came lumbering towards her, massive hands outstretched.
Of course this was what was beyond the black iron door, this was what had always been behind it, this was what mamma had warned her against.
‘…the dangerous thing about spider light, Maud, is that it hides things–things you never knew existed in the world. But once you have seen those things, you can never afterwards forget them…’
The spider light room tilted and spun. Maud gasped and tumbled dizzily back into the dark corridor, slamming the door and drawing the bolt back with a hand that shook violently. Then she ran, without looking back, through the passageways until at last–oh merciful God, oh thank you, Jesus!–she saw a door half open, and beyond it Latchkill’s grounds.
The nightmare of the black iron door went with her as she ran. It’s real, thought Maud, going through the thick shrubbery and the leafless trees, gasping when a low branch caught her cloak and half dragged it off. It exists, that door and that room–they’re both there, at Latchkill’s heart. But how could they be in my dreams all those years ago? Don’t think about it yet, though; just think about getting safely outside.
The gates were ahead of her at last: they were like black jutting teeth in the darkness. They would be locked and guarded by the lodge keeper, but people must come and go through those gates: delivery carts with provisions, the nurses going on or off duty. In the dim light, with the dark blue Latchkill cloak around her shoulders Maud might pass as one of the nurses. But supposing the lodge keeper knew them all? He would certainly know the times they came and went. Maud thought about this, and then remembered the cheerful voice that had called out about only another hour before going off-duty. St Michael’s church clock was just chiming nine, so it was a reasonably safe guess that the changeover to the night staff would happen at ten. Very well, she would wait until ten. It was quite a cold night, but not icily so, and the ground was perfectly dry. She would trust to luck that her escape would not be discovered in the next hour, and she could slip out with the nurses going off-duty. She wrapped the cloak around her, and sat down in the thickest part of the shrubbery.
Memories came flooding in, all the way back to that last morning with mamma. The morning that was the tangled bloodied part of memory–the long-ago morning when the spider light had lain thickly over Amberwood.
It had been her eighth birthday, and Maud had understood by then that mamma lived in her own room, and did not go out. It did not seem odd; it was just what mammas did. She was taken to see her each evening by Mrs Plumtree, after she had had her milk and biscuits, and sometimes mamma said quite ordinary, quite happy things, like, ‘Oh, there’s my dearest girl,’ and, ‘What have you been doing today, my precious one?’ But sometimes she said things Maud did not understand, and that were quite scary. ‘Child of fear,’ she said. ‘That’s what you are, my dear.’ And as Maud’s birthday got nearer, she said, ‘They think I forget the date, but I don’t.’ Maud thought this must mean her birthday, and that mamma was not going to forget it, but later she heard mamma say to papa, ‘It’s the anniversary. One day he should know what he did. He should be made to pay.’ Maud did not know who he was, but in reply, papa only coughed in the nervous way he had when he did not know what to say. But the next morning, he had said to Mrs Plumtree that the mistress was restless again. He dared say it would pass, but in the meantime, perhaps Mrs Plumtree would keep a close watch. Mrs Plumtree had said she would, trust her for that, sir, and was Miss Maud to be taken in as usual?
‘Oh yes,’ papa had said, after a moment. ‘I think that’s perfectly safe.’
And then, early on the very morning of her eighth birthday, mamma had come into Maud’s bedroom, and had said Maud was to be very quiet and to do exactly as she was told, because there was a secret. The secret meant that Maud had to get up at once, get dressed and go with mamma. They had to be mouse-quiet, said mamma, because it was important not to wake papa or Mrs Plumtree.
It was a bit strange for mamma to be out of her room, but Maud had thought it might be something to do with her birthday–it might be that they were going to see a puppy or a kitten. But wherever they were going, Maud almost had to run to keep up with mamma, and mamma kept looking back over her shoulder as if she was worried about somebody seeing them. Once she stopped and tightened her hold on Maud’s hand, and peered into the hedges on the side of the road. Now that Maud was a bit more awake she saw that mamma looked strange: her hair was not coiled up into a neat bun as usual; it was wispy and straggly, and the buttons of her gown were not properly done up–her chemise showed through. Maud hoped they would not meet anyone, because it would be embarrassing for people to see mamma like this. She tried to ask where they were going, but mamma said, ‘I told you, it’s a secret.’