“Charlotte…?” I had no idea what she was talking about.
“My favorite story. You used to read it to me at bedtime.”
What was she…? Oh, no.
“Charlotte’s Web? Oh, Ellie, this is no time for…for…”
“Or remember the time I tried out for the soccer team and they passed on me? Man, if Mister Grellson could see me now.”
“Ellie, please!”
How could she joke about this…this horror?
“Just trying to lighten things up, Mother. You know the expression: Sometimes you’ve got to laugh to keep from crying.”
I bit back a sob. Oh, my poor, dear, sweet child.
“Is that what you feel like doing? Crying?”
“A small part of me is crying—and screaming and shrieking as well—but it’s shrinking, and soon it will be gone.”
The old Ellie? Was she talking about the girl she used to be?
Just then another white globe dropped into view and rolled to join the rest. I retrieved the penlight and, drawing a deep, tremulous breath, angled it upward.
Two of Ellie’s spider legs were poised before her with a smaller version of one of those white globes trapped between the tips. They were rotating the ball this way and that, forming it out of the silky substance flowing from the tips. As I watched, horridly fascinated, it grew steadily until it matched the others in size, at which point the legs released it to fall to the floor.
“Wh-what are those?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then why are you—?”
“The legs seem to have a mind of their own.”
I tried to hold it back, I was trying so hard to be strong for her, but as the legs started spinning another white ball, I couldn’t restrain the sob that burst from me.
“Oh, Ellie, why you? Why you?”
“I don’t know, Mother. Maybe I was the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time, but I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe I was destined for this. After all, I’ve never totally fit in.” A small bitter smile. “And now I really don’t fit in.”
True, she’d never taken anything at face value. Questioned everything—everything. Her mantra was always There’s something else going on here.
“The signal is a perfect example,” she said.
“Signal? What signal?”
“The noise that almost drove me mad that you and Bess couldn’t hear at all.”
“It’s a signal? Of what?”
“I don’t know yet. But I will.”
“That man who carried you from the park…he could hear it too.”
His words had convinced me that Ellie wasn’t having a mental meltdown. In light of what followed, a breakdown would have been far preferable to…this.
“I know,” she said. “We who hear the signals are a rare breed. We’ll be visiting him soon.”
“He told me his name but I don’t know where to find him.”
“He goes by two names and I have his address.”
I shook my head in wonder. “How do you know all this?”
She smiled—a cold grimace. “My coma was very instructive.”
The spider legs dropped another globe to the floor.
Ellie said, “Carry as many as you can back to the room, Mother, and stack them on the window sill.”
Was I being dismissed? I guessed so.
“Why the window sill?
“You’ll like the colors when the sun shines through them.”
“But—”
“Mother, please. It will begin in the heavens—soon—so I must be ready.”
The globes had a slightly sticky feel and I gathered up as many as I could hold in one arm, then crawled back into the tunnel.
“No matter what you think, Mother,” I heard her say behind me, “I’m still Ellie. I know what a good mother you’ve been, and how patient you’ve been with me over the years. And I still want my Blanky—not in here, this isn’t the place for Blanky, but out there, I’ll still need it.”
I was sobbing when I reemerged into Ellie’s old room, but I managed to arrange the half dozen globes on the window sill as she’d said. Their stickiness proved an asset because they stuck to the glass as well as each other. As I was finishing, another globe rolled from the tunnel and stopped outside the arch. And then another and another. I gathered them up as they arrived and added them to the rising pile that was gradually covering all the window panes.
The sun was high and not hitting the glass, but the window faced west; the setting sun would eventually light up the globes.
You’ll like the colors when the sun shines through them…
Would I? I wasn’t so sure. In fact I doubted it very much. What did I care about colors? My Ellie, my baby, had been changed into a monster. By whom? Was it because of something she’d done—or I’d done?
At least she still wanted Blanky. That part of her lived on.
I bunched it up, buried my face in it, and sobbed.
ERNST
Ernst Drexler returned from his meeting with the Council of Seven and slammed his office door behind him.
Was he being paranoid, or was the Council up to something: planning something, or already running some operation without telling him? He was one of the Order’s top actuators, damn it! He should be kept current on all the Order’s activities.
Ernst told himself he shouldn’t allow these free-form suspicions to distract him, but he couldn’t let it go. He’d find out what they were up to and—
A knock and Brother Slootjes entered without waiting to be summoned. They’d known each other long enough to dispense with such formalities.
“Alone?” Slootjes said. “Good.”
Ernst recognized the manila envelope cradled in his arm: the memoir from Mrs. Novak. The loremaster looked shaken. That was not good. Ernst’s stomach turned.
“So you’ve read it?”
Slootjes nodded. “I have.”
“And?”
“It’s quite intriguing, even disturbing, one might say.”
Ernst was finding the loremaster’s penchant for creating drama more vexing than usual today.
“As disturbing as Winslow’s novel? Spit it out, man!”
Slootjes dropped into a chair and looked lost for a few seconds. Then he shook himself.
“If true, it’s a shattering document, but I’m a long way from being convinced of its authenticity.”
“Did you ever believe it could possibly be true?”
“We both know
