Along Came a Spider Ch. 05

Tabitha coaxed her eyes open, then blinked at her surroundings. She was somewhere very warm and very snug, wrapped up tight like a sushi roll. Her eyes shifted back into focus, and she realized her head was buried in something soft and navy blue. A lightbulb blazed yellow from somewhere behind it.

With a bit of squirming and thrashing, she managed to surface from the depths of a soft fleece blanket. From the light of the single lamp in the far right corner, she could make out the outlines of couches and a cheap-looking coffee table. Not her coffee table. As she squinted at it, she could see a short pile of DVD boxes littering its surface. Not her DVD's. Behind the coffee table, a wide television was displaying an idle screen with a colorful logo flickering from one corner to another. Not her television.

Someone behind her sighed drowsily, and an arm tightened its grip around her waist, hauling her away from the edge of the couch and back up against a firm chest. Tabitha's eyes went wide. She knew whose chest that was.

She let out a long, shuddering breath and closed her eyes. She could feel James's body and the blanket brushing up against her bare skin, enveloping her like a cocoon. At least she was still wearing her panties. Her bra, however, was unaccounted for. A heavy, hot flush burned her cheeks as she tried to piece together the events of the night prior and did so all too successfully. The two of them had retreated to one of James's sofas after the...incident in his bedroom, and what should have been an innocent evening watching movies was quickly interrupted when the two of them realized how difficult it was to keep their hands off of one another. They made it most of the way through The Princess Bride with their clothes on, (in fact, Tabitha made it a point to keep herself planted firmly on the opposite side of the sofa for most of it), but the two of them had shifted and squirmed closer to one another until she found herself tucked under his arm with her head propped up on his shoulder. He kissed her cheek just before the clergyman made the wedding speech---sweetly enough, she thought, but somehow the movie ended with Tabitha straddling his hips on that couch while he tore off her sweater.

She didn't really remember the other two movies.

But now here she was, Tabitha thought: intact, conscious enough, and, most importantly, not depleted of all her blood. And now she was forced to wonder if she had actually been wrong about James. There were plenty of other explanations for what she had seen, weren't there? Perhaps he just had a particularly malevolent stomach ulcer and...maybe a sleep disorder of some kind. But he couldn't possibly be an insomniac. He was sleeping like the dead---or at least the severely concussed---behind her; even snoring as she kicked her way out from the blanket to look for her phone.

When she found it under her knee, she bit her lip. It was only half-past six. Part of her was deeply, sorely tempted to wriggle up against James and fall back asleep. But then she saw the green blinking light on the upper right-hand corner, and a jolt of realization banished the sleepiness from her brain. When she unlocked her screen, she saw a long line of missed calls and text messages. All from...

"Lily," she breathed, clutching a handful of her hair in panic. She never called, never texted, and never showed up at Lily's house. And after everything she had told her, she was half-surprised that she hadn't woken up to Lily crouched over them in all black like a pink-haired ninja, brandishing a wooden stake. She had to call her back, but she couldn't possibly do it with James lying only feet away from her, asleep or not.

Tabitha attempted to roll off the couch, but was stopped short when she encountered James's arm wrapped firmly over her. She tried again, harder this time, but he didn't budge. His body was as hard and unmoving as stone---almost, she thought, the notion drifting unwanted through her brain, like he had gone stiff from rigor mortis. But his breath was still coming shallow and rhythmic through his nose, and as she writhed in his grip, she saw his jaw slip open peacefully. He looked almost as if he was about to start drooling on her shoulder. Tabitha jerked herself roughly out from under his arm, but when she made to scoot away from him, he rolled on top of her.

Tabitha flushed and let out a moan of frustration, but James didn't even twitch. She wiggled her knees up until her feet were pressed up against his chest, clenching her jaw from the effort of moving beneath him, then did the same with her hands and heaved him away from her with all of her might. After two tries, James slumped to the side and she rolled off of the couch, panting loudly. To her surprise, he continued to snooze quietly with his back facing her. His left arm felt around, making her flinch, but he only closed his fingers around a red throw pillow and hugged it tightly to his chest. His snoring resumed shortly afterwards.

Tabitha gathered up her clothes and dressed as quietly as she could, giving up after a brief search for her missing bra and tugging her sweater on over her bare chest. Her socks were peeking out from under the coffee table, and her boots were right where she had left them: next to her purple backpack, which lay forgotten near James's front door. She grimaced when she knelt down to strap them on and felt the soreness in between her thighs.

It was time for the shortest walk of shame in human history.

She opened the door as quietly as she could manage, wincing at every tiny creak and whine. When she was certain it was firmly shut, she limped to her door and fished around her front backpack pocket for her keys. As her fingers closed around them, she heard the building door close with a slam. Well, at least someone else was up at this hour. She dialed Lily's number and put her phone to her cheek as she thrust the key into her lock, and, to her surprise, she heard a tinny little ringtone chirping from somewhere in the stairway.

It stopped after a couple of rings, and Tabitha stared uncertainly down the hall as the voice on the other end of the line also echoed from the stairway. "Tabs?"

"...Lily?" Tabitha said slowly. The line went dead and a hasty series of thumps sounded from the stairs. A pink head of hair appeared over the top step, followed by a pale face and a body encased in a fitted leather jacket. Lily stopped at the top of the stairs and stared at her in disbelief, the expression magnified by the impressive dark circles that surrounded her eyes. For several seconds, the two of them just stood in place and looked at one another.

"Tabitha," she whispered, her voice hoarse with relief. "Oh, shit. You're...I was..." The surprise on her face faded slowly into fury. "What's wrong with you? You couldn't have called or something?" she demanded irritably, marching towards her. "I drove here at, like, one to see if you were around and you didn't answer your door, and then---" She stopped short when she was directly in front of Tabitha, and her eyes darted down to the neckline of Tabitha's sweater. Tabitha followed her gaze and felt her face burn when she noticed that not only was it inside out, it was backwards. A little white tag was sticking out from under her chin.

"Look," she began, but Lily's face had already lit up with understanding.

"You slut!" she crowed. "No wonder you didn't answer your phone!"

"Shhh!"

"I'm still pissed at you---so pissed---but...I don't know, I guess I'm proud of you! How long has it been, anyway...?" She was cut off as Tabitha wrenched her door open and tugged Lily inside with her, fuming quietly. When the door shut behind them, Lily was still staring down at her with wide, gleeful eyes. "I mean, you did, didn't you?" she continued in an excited whisper.

"...Yes."

Lily thought about that for a moment, but then wiggled a finger at her accusingly. "Ohhh, I get it. So you could find out more about him, right?"

Tabitha rubbed her eyes hard. "It wasn't like that," she finally said into her hands. "It was...well. It was really nice. He was nice, I mean."

Lily stared at her for a bit, then shook her head in awe. "...Okay. Wow. So...does that mean...?"

"I don't know. It all happened really fast," Tabitha said, depositing her backpack onto the counter and looking anywhere but at her friend's face. "Maybe I was wrong about him," she finished quietly.

"Wow," Lily said again. "God damn." Tabitha shuffled her feet. "I guess I like this new Tabitha," she said, offering her a grin. "Hunting monsters, sleeping with the enemy. All I have to do is get you out of your apartment a little more often and you'll be like a whole new person."

Tabitha's mouth twitched into a unwilling smile. "Never."

Lily snorted. "Well, at least I know you're alive now," she muttered, slinging her purse back over her shoulder. "I left for work early today to check on you. You caught me right before I tried to break down your door, maybe James's afterwards. Good thing, too. All things considered, that...might have ended a little awkward."

"Probably." Tabitha stretched, her body still stiff from a night spent on a worn leather sofa. "I really am sorry about last night. If you're not busy later---"

"Oh, no. You aren't going to use me as a crutch to avoid James when you get cold feet again. I've got plans anyway." Tabitha opened her mouth to explain that that wasn't what she wanted at all, but Lily suddenly dipped down and wrapped her in a spine-cracking hug, then drew back and gestured in a circle around her face. "So proud," she mouthed, and then she pulled open the door and slipped out into the hallway. "Text me later!" she called as she hurried towards the stairs.

" 'Bye," Tabitha replied, shutting the door slowly behind her. When Lily's footsteps faded away, she let out a long breath and slumped back against the wall. A stunned smile worked its way onto her lips.

She ran her fingers through her hair and grimaced when they came away slightly greasy. Maybe a shower would bring her back to earth.

The rest of the morning passed steadily and altogether too quickly for Tabitha, until ten o'clock finally arrived and she was pinning her hair into a hasty bun in the bathroom mirror and shrugging on her grey coat. As she slipped her purse over her shoulder, she spotted that fabric grocery sack sitting next to the sink, its previous contents spread out across the countertop.

After she locked up her door for the day, she hung the sack from the doorknob to apartment 201B, then watched it sway there heavily from over her shoulder as she retreated to the staircase.

When she returned that night, the bag was gone. And so was James.

After changing into jeans and a tank top and battling a brief internal struggle, she dragged herself to his door and knocked three times, gnawing violently at her nails as she waited. But there was no answer at all; no telltale footsteps, no soft thrum of TV voices. She tried to pretend that his absence, that empty silence, didn't bother her.

When she dropped her purse onto her nightstand, she let out a yelp. Something black and shiny and nearly the length of her thumb skittered out from beneath her bed, darted in front of her bare feet, and then made a break for her bedroom door. Wild with panic, her brain flooded with fresh thoughts of roach infestations and many-legged creatures crawling over her in her sleep, she plucked one of her boots from the floor and gave chase wielding it high over her head.

It flitted through the living room area and stopped briefly beneath her kitchen counter, and Tabitha paused when she caught a proper glimpse of it. It was a cricket, glossy and blacker than tar. She lowered her boot. Were there such things as a cricket infestations? Did they travel in packs? They certainly must, considering how many of them she had seen recently.

It let out a brief chirp and scuttled towards her front door, then slipped under the crack beneath it. After it vanished into the hallway, she saw the shadows of feet appear under her door, and shortly afterwards, a couple crisp knocks sounded from the other side.

Tabitha's heart gave an unwelcome lurch in her chest. James? Maybe he didn't work tonight after all. With a sudden surge of haste that made her feel ridiculous, she dropped her boot, dove for the knob, and wrenched the door open.

"I didn't think you were---" she began, but she trailed off when she saw the two tall, middle-aged men that were suddenly standing in front of her.

They both had square, grizzled-looking faces that were coated with a layer of gold-and-silver stubble on the chins, and wild-looking green eyes that stared out from beneath thick brows. They must have been twins. There was no other explanation for it. In fact, for a fraction of a second, Tabitha's brain convinced itself that there was simply a mirror behind the first man that wasn't working the way mirrors should, and that it was reflecting the man's face instead of the back of his head.

Once that fraction of a second had passed, however, she began to see little bits and pieces of one brother that varied from the other---their clothes, for instance. They were both clad in somewhat shabby black wool coats that had probably been purchased for about ten dollars at a thrift store, but the man in front was wearing one that had two rows of three large buttons, and the man behind him was wearing one that had one row of four smaller buttons. Their faded blue jeans were nearly identical, but the man in front was wearing a pair that seemed just a little too large for him. Strings of denim trailed on the floor from the hems, which were tattered from being stepped on one too many times.

The only articles of clothing the two of them were wearing that seemed to match perfectly were their wide-brimmed black hats. They looked like nice hats. In fact, they very much resembled the sort of handmade ones that Tabitha had once seen in the store windows of a very well-to-do shopping district. Those hats probably cost more than the rest of their outfits combined.

"...Hi," Tabitha said instead. In between their feet, the black cricket paused before skittering past them and down the length of the hallway. If either of the men noticed it, it didn't seem to bother them.

The man in front lowered his knocking hand, but before it vanished back into his coat pocket, she saw that the flesh was pockmarked with deep, dark scars, to the point that she found herself wondering if they were scars at all and not some chronic skin condition. "We catch you at a bad time?" he asked. His voice was raspy, like he used it too much or not nearly often enough.

"No," said Tabitha. "I don't think so."

"Good. You're a hard lady to get ahold of, you know. We popped by the past couple nights, but I guess we must have missed you." His green eyes dropped and crawled blatantly up the length of her, sizing her up. "It's 'Tabitha', right? Tabitha Miller?"

"Can I help you with something?" she asked, more than a little perplexed. Tabitha didn't often find herself entertaining strange men on her doorstep, but this encounter specifically was peculiar for two reasons. For one, she had lived out the past several years in apartment buildings with heavy, tightly-locked steel doors on all sides, and doors like that had a tendency to deter all but the most tenacious of solicitors. In fact, the last solicitor Tabitha had spoken to was simply a building tenant who invested half of his savings into a pyramid scheme. Secondly, Tabitha led a lifestyle that could be considered mildly boring at best by the local police department, so she wasn't used to greeting strange men at the door who already knew her by name.

Because of this, Tabitha assumed that, within the next five minutes, the two men at her door would either tell her that Lily had finally done something really stupid and ask for her whereabouts, or pull several boxes of expensive knives out of nowhere and attempt to sell them to her.

"Actually," said the man in the back, in a voice that was like a perfect recording of his brother's, "we were wondering if there was a way we could help you."

Tabitha pursed her lips. Right. Pyramid scheme it was. "I'm sorry, but I don't think---"

"We heard you might be having a bit of trouble," interjected the man in the front. He offered Tabitha a brief, secretive smile that she did not return.

"With what?"

The two men exchanged glances. "...Unsavory characters," the man in the back said.

Tabitha blinked, opened her mouth, paused, and then blinked again. Then, her eyes went wide. "Oh," she said, putting a hand to her lips. "Oh, that's right. Did...did he send you? That...man?" she asked hopefully, thinking of the pale-haired shopkeeper and wondering if that was an adequate description for him. The men stared fixedly at her, and she gave both of them an apologetic smile. "I thought he forgot about me."

They both turned to give one another a very identical, very inscrutable look, then glanced back down at her. "I think it would be better if we talked inside," the man in front began, but Tabitha cut him off with a vigorous shake of her head.

"Look," she said, "I'm sorry for what I said before. I was being stupid. There isn't anything wrong, and I don't need any help. But, um, you can tell him that he can keep it. The scarf, that is. And that I really appreciate his help," she finished, feeling more idiotic with every word that left her lips and wishing that she would just stop speaking. When the men continued to stare at her, she shakily lifted her index finger to her mouth and began to chew at her fingernail. "...Did you need something else?"

The two men remained silent for a moment, but then the man in front removed his right hand from his pocket and adjusted his hat. His eyes stayed fixed on her face, unsettlingly green and calculating. "I see," he finally said. "You'll give us a call, won't you? If you...see something?" he added, and Tabitha paused with her hand on the doorknob.

"Like...what exactly?" she asked.

The man in the back leaned a little closer. "Unsavory characters," he said again. When he moved to shove his hands into his pockets, Tabitha saw a tiny, round glass pendant peeking out from the neck of his shirt. It looked like a miniature glass vial, stoppered with an even tinier cork. There was something inside of it---something red---but he was still too far away for her to make out what it was.

Tabitha swallowed. "Sure. Is, ah, is there a number or---oh, thank you," she said as the man in the front withdrew his other hand and pressed a paper rectangle into her palm declaring Hammond and Hammond Extermination Services in Times New Roman with a phone number printed beneath it. It looked like it had been cut out of printer paper. "Right," she said. "Um...thanks for stopping by."

The man in the back gave her one last, suspicious look from beneath the brim of his hat. "We'll probably be in touch," he grunted, right before she shut the door in their identical faces.

She turned that makeshift card over and over in her hand and listened to their footsteps grow softer in the hallway. Extermination Services. It didn't take much to figure out what that meant. She found herself wondering if she had put James in some sort of dangerous position

But James didn't have anything to worry about, did he? Because James, she thought determinedly, was definitely not a...an unsavory character.

She slept restlessly that night, her mind plagued with thoughts of blood-caked lips and shrewd green eyes. And every hour, she twitched and scrunched her legs up to her chest when she felt the ghosts of insect limbs skimming over her ankles.