Medusa's Web Read Free Page A

and Madeline had been seven, and redundant evidence at this late date shouldn’t have been needed to confirm that they were gone for good.
    â€œWhen I had money,” he said quietly, “I hired a private investigator to look for them. Social Security numbers, dates of birth—nothing.”
    Madeline sniffed and nodded. “That’s good, anyway, that you did that.”
    â€œLet’s look at our rooms,” he said, stepping past her and pulling open the door that led to Madeline’s old room. He leaned in to switch on the overhead light. “Look, yours isn’t bad at all!”
    Scott took Madeline by the elbow and led her across the bare hardwood floor into her old room, where a poster of the Woody character from the movie Toy Story was somehow still tacked up on the wall, and then he walked on into his old room and turned on the light there.
    Fortunately the roof had not leaked over their rooms, and the ceilings were hammocked with cobwebs but unstained. As Claimayne had said, though, the rooms were chilly.
    â€œI’ll fetch that heater,” Scott said.
    Madeline crossed her arms and leaned into the connecting doorway. “She doesn’t seem to hate you anymore. These rooms could use some air too.” She walked across to his window, twisted the latch, and tugged, but it didn’t move.
    â€œI’ll get it in a sec,” he said. “You’re right, she seemed downright friendly. I’m glad.” He brushed some dust off an empty shelf. “Claimayne looks pretty weird these days, doesn’t he? I wonder how long he’s been in a wheelchair.”
    â€œSince a couple of years before I moved out in ’08.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with him?”
    â€œI’m—not sure.”
    â€œOh.” After a pause, Scott went on, “What’s that gold thing he wears around his neck?”
    â€œIt’s supposed to be the DNA coil. Double helix. He likes to look at it.”
    â€œWell, he’s a poet, right? It’s probably a metaphor for something.”
    Scott had dumped the contents of the plastic bag he used for luggage onto his bare dusty mattress, and he flipped through the pile of damp shirts and socks till he found a pack of Camels. Blobs of water were visible under the cellophane, shifting as he handled the pack. “My trashbag leaked,” he observed glumly. He began pulling out the damp cigarettes and laying them in a line on a dusty shelf.
    When he turned back to the bed, he noticed the corner of an envelope under a crumpled shirt, and he pulled it free and held it up.
    â€œHave you opened yours yet?” he asked.
    â€œThe lawyer said her instructions were to wait till we were here. ‘In residence.’”
    â€œWell, we’re here. Maybe there’s a five in it.” Their aunt Amity had always put a five-dollar bill inside their birthday cards.
    â€œI hope so,” said Madeline. “It’s probably all we’ll get.”
    â€œShe meant well, with that last will.”
    The envelope had stayed dry, and Scott tore it open. All it contained was a folded slip of paper about six inches square, and he unfolded it and looked at it—
    â€”And he tried to fling it away, but he couldn’t move. Inked on the paper was a jaggedly eight-limbed abstract figure, and he could feel a strong alien reciprocity between it and its reversed image on his retinas; the figure seemed to rotate, or to be about to, and the corners of the limbs were suddenly bristly with finer lines, and now it appeared to consist of a dozen fissipating legs, curling and spinning.
    He was breathless and his heart was suddenly pounding, and for a long, long moment he was not even conscious of his own identity.
    Eventually he was aware of shifting shapes with vertical sides and no comprehensible scale, and he knew that their apparently infinite height was an optical illusion.
    The shapes moved aside and he fell