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“We were leaving, and they caught us. They shot Stan in front of me. Oh God…” Tears squeezed out of Sebastian’s closed eyes and trickled down his face.
After a respectful silence I asked, “What happened next?”
“They hit me on the back of the head. Next thing I know, I’m looking at you.”
Guilt overwhelmed me. “Sebastian, I’m so sorry. I never would have asked you to go if I’d known this was going to happen.”
“Well, you didn’t go, and here you are… so I don’t think it matters much whether they got me in Tanzania or New York.” He looked around the room and frowned. “What the hell?”
I followed his gaze.
When Armin had marched me in, it had been dark enough that I couldn’t see much clearly. Because of the threatening black bag over Sebastian’s head, I hadn’t really taken the time to look closely around the room. If I had, I would have been a lot more freaked out.
It was definitely freaking me out now.
The walls were covered with glass panes. Terrariums.
And inside were lots and lots of spiders.
All I could see were their outlines, really. Silhouetted bodies, two and three inches long, with spindly legs that ended in sharp points.
Bare wooden branches were placed artistically inside the glass cages, and webs covered them. Webs covered everything.
There was an old made-for-TV movie I’d seen when I was growing up. Kingdom of the Spiders. It was a 70’s cheese-fest starring William Shatner, about the world getting taken over by arachnids. I say ‘cheesy’ now, but as an eight-year-old watching it on late-night TV, I had been terrified. It was bad enough watching a bunch of tarantulas crawl up a crop duster pilot’s legs while he was flying the plane – but the ending was horrific. The last survivors all huddled in a little shack and looked out the window to see that the spiders had covered the entire city in webs. Literally, the California town looked like it had been snowed under – but with spider webs.
That’s what the glass terrariums looked like, but on a smaller scale.
“Oh my God…” I whispered, gazing around me in terror.
Suddenly the door opened, and there she was.
Miranda.
She wore a long white dress, appropriate for a fancy party on the beach – or a yacht. Clingy fabric, sleeveless, with a top held up by a single loop of cloth around her neck. A gold metallic belt was cinched around her waist.
She looked like a Bond girl. Or a Bond villain, what with all the spiders. Or both.
She flipped a switch, and suddenly all the cages lit up. I could see the spiders for what they were: black and yellow garden spiders, the kinds that had spun webs in the bushes of my family’s Charlotte, North Carolina home.
A couple of them skittered along their webs as the lights startled them. I shuddered as though I had felt their legs brushing my own skin.
With the lights on, I realized Miranda wasn’t alone. Armin and another man dressed all in black were behind her.
Miranda was carrying a foot-long black box. She laid it at the head of the table and then sat down.
The men walked over and placed bottles of water and paper plates with sandwiches in front of Sebastian and me.
“Leave us,” she said, and the two men exited the room.
“Go ahead,” she commanded me and Sebastian.
Having eaten only three or four hours before, I wasn’t exactly hungry – but Sebastian eyed the food as though he was ravenous.
He obviously didn’t trust Miranda, though, because he kept his arms at his side. He saw that I wasn’t eating, and glanced at me questioningly; I nodded.
“I think it’s safe,” I said.
He immediately began to inhale the food and guzzle the water.
