Forty-Nine
She dared not approach Brighton Hollow with the
same suicidal boldness as before. She waited until nightfall, and
then zigzagged her way through town to Dr. Basil Kaufman's house.
She tore the back door from its wooden frame in her haste and rushed
into his bedroom to find the old man fumbling to light a lantern.
"I left my caterpillar outside," she said
quickly. She had, in fact, stuffed the bug in Doc's mailbox and
closed it to ensure it wouldn't hurt anyone, or run off on her.
She waited until Doc recovered from the shock
of her violent entrance. Caitlin was appalled at how old and tiny
he had grown. Even his house had drastically shrunk in size. "The
caterpillars are spinning cocoons," she said. "I saw one wrap up a
little girl like a fly in a spider web."
Doc reached for his shoes, the only item of
clothing he was missing in the unheated house. "What about your own
insect?" he said, his voice hardly more than a harsh whisper.
Caitlin heard congestion in his lungs when he breathed.
"It's acting funny." It isn't eating right,
she wanted to say, but she didn't dare subject Doc Kaufman to
unnecessary horror.
Doc reached for an aerosol-powered horn from
his nightstand. Even before the caterpillars, Doc had used the
devices to attract the attention of the sheriff's office during
medical emergencies. "Plug your ears. This is rather loud."
He let loose two honking blasts and sat
trembling on the edge of his bed until a guard came crashing into
the room. The man reeled back in panic when he saw Caitlin crouched
in the room like an overgrown child in a dollhouse. He fumbled for
a holstered revolver, but in his clumsiness, he gave Doc time to
intervene. "Caitlin means no harm. Tell Rex that Caitlin has
important news to report. Quote me verbatim."
The guard gave him a prompt nod of
acknowledgment and rushed off. Doc sat on the edge of his bed
and gazed at her with rheumy eyes dulled by pain.
"He's going to be mad at
me," Caitlin said. "I could have hurt you. But I'm so
scared. I've never meant to hurt anyone."
Rex came pounding through the house. He paused
in the bedroom door and stood glaring at Caitlin. "It's happening,"
Doc said. "It must be happening simultaneously everywhere. This
may be our only chance to see for ourselves what more we have in
store for us."
"Caitlin, tell me exactly what's happening,"
Rex said.
"The caterpillars are spinning cocoons,"
Caitlin said, her voice and her entire body trembling.
"We'll take the snow-mobile," Doc said. "Just
the two of us. As observers."
"Doc, you're too damned sick to go anywhere."
Doc Kaufman chuckled sadly. "Of course, but
would you deny me?"
Rex gazed at the old man, then shook his head
with exasperation and turned away. "Get your stuff together. I'll
be right back."
Doc rose painfully to his feet. He turned to
Caitlin for help. "I need to pack a few things."
Caitlin followed instructions and stuffed a
backpack and a black leather bag with clothes and equipment. She
followed him outside carrying two large canvas bags.
Caitlin heard the snowmobile coming from a mile
away. It pulled up in front of Doc's house in a cloud of acrid
smoke, its headlight a wide swath of stark white light that cast
moving shadows among the surrounding trees.
Half the town managed to gather on the street
out front. Their kerosene lanterns illuminated angry and frightened
faces hovering disembodied in the night. Caitlin fetched her
caterpillar from its prison. It should have been trilling with
protest with so much prey at hand. Instead, it was silent and all
but inert. Even its grip on her shoulder had weakened.
"The snowmobile won't carry the three of us,"
Rex said to Caitlin. "We’ll go on ahead.” He studied the calm
night. “We’ll follow your footprints."
The snowmobile roared off into the night.
Suddenly alone, Caitlin glanced at the massed townspeople in the
street. They all had known her as Leon Biggs' daughter. Now they
saw her as a freak and a traitor in league with the beings who had
destroyed their world.
But they let her by. She crossed the street
and cut through the yards to the edge of town. There, she resigned
herself to the laborious journey back to the village at the
crossroads, following her own trail in the snow as Rex had done, moving at twice the speed any of the
men of Brighton Hollow would have been able to maintain, but only a
fraction of the speed of the snowmobile.
She had time to think about what her
caterpillar would do when the time came for it to spin its cocoon.
How would it feed her, if that happened? What would become of her
if it wrapped her up like it did the red-haired child in the
closet? Would it kill her in the end as seemed so perfectly
obvious?
She reached the outskirts of the small town of
living nightmares. Rex had parked back in the trees and had
decided to wait for her for the protection she provided. Caitlin
returned to the shack containing the half-digested body of the giant
and the cocooned child with the two men following.
She heard voices in the distance, probably
hunters from some nearby community roaming within a mile or two of
their position. She saw no fresh footprints in the area, no
evidence of the woman with the rifle anywhere nearby. The
spider-woman was nowhere in sight.
She peeked inside the shack where the giant lay
frozen on the floor like a half-melted ice cream bar. Rex and Doc
inspected the interior of the shack. She took the opportunity to
retrieve the pistol the giant had taken from her and tucked it into her
waistband.
Caitlin cautiously opened the closet door.
"Holy shit," the deputy murmured.
Doc examined the cocoon closely. "I don't
think I can extract the child. The caterpillar is wrapped around
it.”
“We can't just leave her in there," Rex said
just as softly.
"We need to allow events to unfold of their own
accord in order to understand what's happening,” Doc insisted. “Too
many lives are at stake."
Rex turned to Caitlin. "What about this
spider-woman you mentioned. Where is she?"
Caitlin glanced out the window, thinking her
footprints would be easy enough to follow in the snow. "Shall I go
find her?"
Rex mulled over the idea and nodded. "But
watch out for yourself, and get back as soon as you can."
"You might consider leaving your caterpillar
behind," Doc suggested half-heartedly.
Caitlin thought about it. She gave a little
shake of her head.
"Caitlin, it might turn on you at any time.”
"I can't live without it anyhow," she reminded
him.
Caitlin started out across the field of snow
lightheaded with a growing sense of unreality. The bug was oddly
limp on her shoulder. Rather than risk having it fall, she tucked
it beneath one arm and hurried through the morning light to where
she had encountered the spider-woman. Her trail in the snow led
Caitlin down a ravine. A mile or two away, it went back up a hill
and crossed a clearing to an enclosed picnic shelter of a state
park.
Caitlin circled the shelter fearing an ambush.
A number of sparrows hopping about the entrance to the shelter
assured her that no one lurked inside. Cautiously, she went in. It
took an anxious moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
She started violently when the dark mass
resolved itself before her in the dim light. The spider-lady. The
spider-woman’s caterpillar lifted its head and sniffed the air in
reaction to her fright.
The caterpillar had turned her into a monster,
and then it had betrayed her. She was still alive. Death would
have relaxed the expression of horror on her face. She hung halfway
up a roof support, her and the caterpillar, all spun together with a
dense covering of silk. Her legs were folded against her body. One
bare foot protruded. Her gangly arms were twisted over her head in
her last gesture of self-protection.
What had been a yard-long caterpillar had
already grown to a pulsating enigma half the size of the spider
woman herself. Caitlin backed away shaking her head. She did not
want to see the thing that would emerge from that opaque covering of
silk. She did not want to believe that this was what her own
caterpillar was going to do to her, given the chance. No matter how
intense her instinct for survival, she had to be willing to put the
gun to her head and pull the trigger before that ever happened.
Caitlin went back to report her discovery to
Doc and Rex. Doc took a seat in the adjoining kitchen of the shack
containing the bodies of the children and stared at the floor for a
time, lost in thought.
"Free the little girl," Rex said.
Doc led the way to the closet. He pointed out
a central location along the cocoon's mass. "Put a bullet there."
Rex studied the situation. "I might hit the
child."
"Don't shoot," Caitlin said. "There are
hunters nearby. I can hear them."
"They would have heard the snowmobile
regardless," Rex reminded her.
The oversight annoyed her. Everyone in the
entire world seemed capable of outwitting and outthinking her.
Rex drew his revolver. "Doc, Caitlin, back
away."
Caitlin didn't have a good view of what was
happening, but she heard the hammer of Rex's revolver set. The shot
that followed rang in her ears. Rex stood back and let Doc move in.
With the caterpillar safely dispatched, Doc
bent over the body of the child and sighed after a moment. "There's
no pulse. There's no way of knowing if she had one to begin with."
Rex holstered his gun. "Let's get to the
shelter before company arrives. I'll go get the snowmobile.
Caitlin, you go on ahead."
Caitlin was halfway to the shelter before she
heard the snowmobile cackle to life and come screaming across the
terrain after her. Rex sped on by, following the trail of her
footprints in the snow. By the time she caught up with the two, the
snowmobile had parked alongside a protective wall of firewood.
Doc and Rex were inside the shelter inspecting the cocoon.
"Incredible," Doc murmured. "This is just
incredible."
Rex looked over a brick fireplace built into
one side wall.
"They'll see the smoke," Caitlin warned.
"They? How many?"
"A dozen," Caitlin said. "Maybe more."
Rex grimaced. "I've got to keep Doc warm. I
brought a couple rifles along. It should be enough to hold them off,
if you'll stand guard for us."
"I can do that," Caitlin said, eager to be of
use.
Caitlin started out the door.
"Stay inside with us. Keep watch through the
shutters. If you expose yourself, you're liable to get yourself
nailed by someone with a scope."
Caitlin swallowed her pride and did as she was
told. As she circled the inside of the shelter and peeked through
the cracks in the shutters, she watched Doc set up a camcorder in
front of the cocoon and Rex light a fire.
The sight of the camcorder terrified her, the
heat of the fire became unbearable, and her caterpillar grew
agitated and chattered loudly.
"Caitlin, put the damned bug outside," Rex
said. "It's making me nervous as hell."
Despite the threat the caterpillar had become,
she couldn't bear to part with the insect. She needed it close so
that she could monitor its behavior. She was still hungry and maybe
it would feed her again. "I'll keep watch outside," Caitlin said.
"It's getting dark, and I can see better than they can anyhow."
"Caitlin, damn it."
She ignored him, although the hunters were
closer, and Rex had been right about the danger of getting shot if
she stayed in the open. Instead, she ran for the trees. She would
reconnoiter and give Rex an accurate assessment of the danger. Rex
could hold off a small army with a rifle, long enough at least for
the transformed caterpillar to emerge from its cocoon and to show
the world what was going to happen next.
Whatever came out was going to be deadly by an
unimaginable factor. She could feel the truth of her suspicion in
her bones. The creature on her shoulders was not her ally in life.
It was not her provider. She had known from the very beginning that
it was just using her, and then it would be the death of her.
