Medusa's Web Read Free Page B

through them, and he found himself sitting up in a bed with sunlit curtains flickering to one side. The colors were muted and the things in front of him were hard to focus on. He saw a banner, with letters on it, and he tried to make unfamiliar eyes read the words. At last he pieced it out— WELCOME HOME SCOTT . He swung his field of vision to the side and recognized a four-cornered shape as a blue bedside table. Among a cluster of small orange cylinders was an oval object with a handle on it—probably a mirror, and he pushed a spotted old hand toward it, clutched it, and brought it to a point in front of him. It was indeed a mirror, and he was able to recognize the face it showed him.
    It was his aunt Amity’s face, expressing his own alarm in wide eyes and bared dentures.
    The shapes lost their distinction, and again he was aware of the endlessly-vertical-seeming shapes—but they parted once more, and he seemed this time to be pulled between them, and then he was staring at a brown rectangle with a stylized Medusa head imprinted in gold on it. The hand he moved toward it was slim and smooth, with long, tapering fingers and long nails—evidently a woman’s hand—and around its wrist was a silver bracelet made of links in a chain. The hand was clutching what he could peripherally see was a slip of paper with another eight-limbed pattern on it, so he quickly focused instead on the brown rectangle, which he now saw to be a folder of coarse-textured deckle-edged paper, with a ribbon and a red wax seal holding it closed.
    He remembered having seen that folder before, long ago.
    He voluntarily reached out and touched it—and the air quivered around it, and a profound rolling vibration made a blur of his consciousness—
    â€”And then he was sprawled awkwardly facedown across the springy surface of a dusty mattress, panting against crumpled damp flannel.
    Scott rolled over and sat up, gasping at sharp new aches in his shoulders and jaw, and he clawed at the mattress and his tumbled shirts and socks to fix himself into the real world. He could feel that the square of paper was still in his hand, damp with sweat now, and he tore it to pieces without looking anywhere near it.
    He was aware that he could see, but the shapes of what he knew must be wall and shelf and window all seemed to be just patches of varied color at no contrasting distances.
    His heart was thudding rapidly in his chest, and he was panting through clenched teeth. “Don’t,” he managed to say, “look in your envelope.” I’m back, he told himself; I’m here, I’m myself in my own body, and I won’t go there again.
    â€œI won’t,” Madeline squeaked. More levelly, she went on, “You told me to, a second ago, but I won’t. Scott, you’re scaring me. Are you all right?”
    He peered up at the tall, narrow angularity that he knew was his sister and forced himself to comprehend that her shape and thenumber of her eyes didn’t actually change when she turned her head from side to side, profile to full face to profile.
    â€œSorry,” he said. “I—think I’m okay now, or I will be.” He slid his shoes back and forth on the floor, glad to feel the texture of the wood through the soles. He looked in her direction and forced his voice to be steady as he asked, “Do I look all right? My face? Am I slurring my words?”
    â€œYou look fine,” she said anxiously. “What, do you think you had a stroke? You’re talking fine.”
    â€œNot a stroke.” I hope to God, he thought. He waved his hand, with shreds of the paper still clinging to it. “It was the same thing that happened that time when we were kids.”
    Her head shifted, evidently nodding. “I saw it was a spider,” she whispered, “on the paper, just glimpsed it.”
    â€œA . . . spider? I didn’t see any spider. No, it was the symbol, like that