“I’ve got a gun,” he said. “And I’m not afraid to use it. I’m going to open the door now. Please go over to the far wall, turn around, and put your hands against it. I’ve brought food. Cooperate and you will both be released unharmed. Cooperate and nobody gets hurt. That means,” he said, delighted to find himself able to deploy an entire battalion of clichés hitherto off-limits, “no funny business.”
He turned on the lights inside the room, then pulled the bolts. The walls of the room were rock and brick. Rusting chains hung from hooks in the ceiling.
They were against the far wall. Rosie looked at the rock. Her mother stared over her shoulder at him like a trapped rat, furious and filled with hate.
Grahame Coats put down the bucket; he did not put down the gun. “Lovely grub,” he said. “And, better late than never, a bucket. I see you’ve been using the corner. There’s toilet paper, too. Don’t ever say I didn’t do anything for you.”
“You’re going to kill us,” said Rosie. “Aren’t you?”
“Don’t antagonize him, you stupid girl,” spat her mother. Then, assuming a smile of sorts, she said, “We’re grateful for the food.”
“Of course I’m not going to kill you,” said Grahame Coats. It was only as he heard the words coming out of his mouth that he admitted to himself that, yes, of course he was going to have to kill them. What other option did he have? “You didn’t tell me that Fat Charlie sent you here.”
Rosie said, “We came on a cruise ship. This evening we’re meant to be in Barbados for the fish fry. Fat Charlie’s in England. I don’t even think he knows where we’ve gone. I didn’t tell him.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” said Grahame Coats. “I’ve got the gun.”
He pushed the door closed and bolted it. Through the door he could hear Rosie’s mother saying, “The animal. Why didn’t you ask him about the animal?”
“Because you’re just imagining it, Mum. I keep telling you. There isn’t an animal in here. Anyway, he’s nuts. He’d probably just agree with you. He probably sees invisible tigers himself.”
Stung by this, Grahame Coats turned off their lights. He pulled out a bottle of red wine and went upstairs, slamming the cellar door behind him.
In the darkness beneath the house, Rosie broke the lump of cheese into four bits and ate one as slowly as she could.
“What did he mean about Fat Charlie?” she asked her mother after the cheese had dissolved in her mouth.
“Your bloody Fat Charlie. I don’t want to know about Fat Charlie,” said her mother. “He’s the reason that we’re down here.”
“No, we’re here because that Coats man is a total nutjob. A nutter with a gun. It’s not Fat Charlie’s fault.” She had tried not to let herself think about Fat Charlie, because thinking about Fat Charlie meant that she inevitably found herself thinking about Spider…
“It’s back,” said her mother. “The animal is back. I heard it. I can smell it.”
“Yes Mum,” said Rosie. She sat on the concrete floor of the meat cellar and thought about Spider. She missed him. When Grahame Coats saw reason and let them go, she’d try to locate Spider, she decided. Find out if there was room for a new beginning. She knew it was only a silly daydream, but it was a good dream, and it comforted her.
She wondered if Grahame Coats would kill them tomorrow.
A CANDLE FLAME’S THICKNESS AWAY, SPIDER WAS STAKED out for the beast.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was low behind him.
Spider was pushing at something with his nose and lips: it had been dry earth, before his spit and blood had soaked into it. Now it was a ball of mud, a rough marble of reddish clay. He had pushed it into a shape that was more or less spherical. Now he flicked at it, getting his nose underneath it and then jerking his head up. Nothing happened, as nothing had happened the previous how-many times. Twenty? A hundred? He wasn’t keeping count. He simply kept on. He pushed his face further into the dirt, pushed his nose further under the ball of clay, jerked his head up and forward…
Nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen.
He needed another approach.
He closed his lips on the ball, closed them around it. He breathed in through his nose, as deeply as he could. Then he expelled the air through his mouth. The ball popped from his lips, with a pop like a champagne cork, and landed about eighteen inches away.
Now he twisted his right hand. It was bound at the wrist, with the rope pulling it tightly toward the stake. He pulled the hand back, bent it around. His fingers reached for the lump of bloody mud, and they fell short.
It was so near…
Spider took another deep breath but choked on the dry dust and began to cough. He tried again, twisting his head over to one side to fill his lungs. Then he rolled over and began to blow, in the direction of the ball, f
orcing the air from his lungs as hard as he could.
The clay ball rolled—less than an inch, but it was enough. He stretched, and now he was holding the clay in his fingers. He began to pinch the clay between finger and thumb, then turning it and doing it again, Eight times.