Violet Eyes Read online

  She did feel a slight tickle when the first brave spider crept up the inner skin of her thigh to follow the warmth. But she thought it was just her own water trailing aberrantly down her leg.

  Until something bit her right where she normally only let Billy’s teeth roam.

  She tensed, and began to rise, though she wasn’t completely through peeing. She reached between her legs with a hand to still the bite/itch and drew her palm back with the remains of a black-and-purple spider there, against the damp.

  “Bastard,” she groaned. Her face twisted in disgust at the creature she’d crushed against the folds of her labia. “Fucker!”

  She shook it off her hand and began to stand.

  But at that moment, the spiders began to jump.

  They landed in her hair and on her back and shoulders. They skittered down her waist and leapt up from the ground to cover her ankles and shins. They were everywhere. Like a swarm of ants over a spot of grease on a summer sidewalk. They fell from the darkness onto her mouth and crawled around her neck to tickle the lobes of her ears.

  They covered her body like a deep violet skin, and they didn’t care when she maniacally batted and slapped and crushed dozens of them with her alarm.

  There were hundreds more to take their place.

  Casey opened her mouth to scream as the spiders covered her naked body like a shifting skin, creeping with delicate but pointed spider legs across her breasts and kissing with spider mouths against the pores of her pubes. But as she screamed, they entered her. From below and above, her mouths both nether and normal filled with the chitinous legs of spiders, though she coughed and cried and thrashed on the ground struggling in vain to spit them out. Her breath came in jagged wheezes as she struggled to breathe but at the same time tried not to suck them any farther inside her. The spiders ignored her flailing hands and frantic rolling and crashing through the fronds near the hut. All they saw was warmth. They smelled her heat. They hungered with a single mind to break through her skin, to drink the blood that flowed in panicked throbs beneath it.

  They kept coming.

  Part One

  New Eyes

  Often a person will stay in an abusive relationship because he or she feels that there is no economic way out. But that is more often than not an excuse that masks a deeper psychological pattern in the victim. Frequently there is a repetitious history in the type of relationships that such a person has entered. You can see it in women who are drawn again and again into relationships where the man has a need to dominate and subjugate the woman, particularly via sexual exploitation. The woman may actually learn to crave the abuse, despite verbally railing against it.

  Some have suggested that the only way to break such codependent patterns is to completely change the environment and relationships of the victim so that she can be free to create new patterns, without any ties to the old.

  —“Starting Over: Breaking the Chains of Co-Dependent Relationships” Family Matters, Volume 22, Issue 9, (2011) page 128.

  “I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.”

  —Voltaire

  Chapter One

  Passanattee

  Monday, May 6. 12:30 p.m.

  Rachel Riordan couldn’t stand listening to the two women any longer. She’d stopped by the Thai place for a quiet getaway lunch. The morning had sucked big time, and when noon rolled around, she’d just needed to escape the office for forty-five minutes and be in her own head. Instead, she’d been forced to live in the heads of the two college girls at the adjoining table—enduring every annoyingly chipper word of the exuberant conversation that ranged from crackpot philosophy to the weirdest sexual position. Modeling for college art classes, drinking at O’Malley’s after last call on Friday (in the alley), waking up with that really cute guy and finding out he was “still really cute—here look at his picture…”.

  “Stop!” Rachel wanted to scream at them by the end of her “peaceful” lunch. “Wake up! The world is not a playground. It’s a slave pit of hard work. And guys are not gorgeous princes, they’re all assholes at heart, looking for their mother and a prostitute all in one. There’s something really wrong in that, yet nobody ever wants to talk about it. Yeah, sometimes after three drinks they look good at midnight, but eventually, they all reveal themselves as trolls.”

  But she kept her mouth shut and tried her best to ignore the girls. She didn’t say a word to anyone for over a half hour, but it turned out to not be the most relaxing of lunches.

  Then again, Rachel hadn’t had the most relaxing life lately. At least she’d finally gotten rid of Anders once and for all and set up house in her own place. She felt good about it. Free for the first time in years. So free she could draw in a deep breath and not feel a catch of fear/worry/anger in her chest as she did so.

  But it still hurt to breathe freely, even if she felt relieved.

  And when she looked at Eric, some of that pain returned. She knew he missed his dad, even if his dad was an asshole. What did he know? He was only ten! Of course he thought his dad’s bathroom humor and rough-and-tumble demeanor was fun. But Rachel needed a man who was ready to grow up. Not a foul-tempered, stormy kid who wouldn’t leave the pool hall behind and didn’t know when to keep his hands to himself.

  She’d grown up, why hadn’t her ex?

  Of course, she had to admit that growing up wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. These days when she saw the growing circles beneath her eyes and the straggly wisps of dark hair that snarled behind her ears and fanned out to slip beneath her shirt collar, she had to wonder what had become of that girl Anders had first met. That perky beach bunny she’d once been who lived in crop tops and knew just how to let her short spiky hair fall over her eyes to make a perfect come-hither, half-hidden gaze. That gaze had always worked. Blame the eyes (an ever-changing amber green) or the heaviness in the lips that formed her “I’ve got a secret” slanted grins. Blame that tight little bod that hadn’t stayed quite so tight once she’d had a kid.

  Living with Anders for a decade had put lines on her face and a little too much to grip around her waist.

  She suspected making it as a single mom was going to work some of the extra padding off. But it would probably put another couple circles under the eyes.

  Rachel tossed a ten-dollar bill on the table and left the restaurant with the echo of the girls’ laughter behind her. She shook her head. They’d learn.

  Probably too late, just like her.

  The house was quiet a few hours later, when she pulled in the driveway. The front door was closed, and no lights were on even as dusk was settling in. Only a couple weeks on the new job and already she was working late. Didn’t bode well. Rachel grabbed her purse and hurried up the redstone walk to the front door of the small bungalow she’d rented.

  She pushed the key in the lock, expecting to feel the knob turned from the other side, but instead, she turned the knob herself, pushed the door open and found herself standing in the shadows of her new living room.

  “Eric!” she called.

  No answer.

  Panic threatened to close her throat before she called his name again. He was supposed to be here. He had to be here. Jeremy, the eighth grader a few houses down had agreed to walk Eric home after school on weekdays and stay here with him until she got home. Easy money for the older boy. It had made her nervous to leave him with another kid, but Jeremy’s mother had assured her it would be fine. The boy was responsible, old for his age…and she’d be just a block away if they needed anything.

  In her mind, she saw images of Eric wrapped up in duct tape in the back of a van, or lying bleeding, abandoned and beaten up on a playground. Hit by a car, unconscious, lying in a ditch. She saw her distraught face plastered on a movie poster with the tagline: Gone…without a trace.

  “Damn it,” she whispered, and walked through the small front room t
o the kitchen. “What was I thinking? How could I trust a kid with a kid? I should have known better. He probably forgot to even pick Eric up after school.”

  That led to other, less fatal fears. What if Eric was still at school? What would they say to her when she came and picked him up? Would they even let her take him home, or would they call DCFS… She dropped her purse on the table and was already reaching for the phone when she saw the yellow slip of paper on the table.

  Mrs. Riordan—I had to take Eric back to my house because my mom went to the doctor so someone had to be here with my sister. Hope that’s okay.

  -Jeremy

  The horrible fears and unfounded anger drained like water into a pool of embarrassment. She hung up the phone a minute, and took a breath. Why hadn’t they called her? The anger began to climb, but then she pulled her phone out of her purse and fingered it on. The first thing that appeared on the screen was Missed Call From…

  Rachel shook her head. She’d never heard the phone. “Damn it,” she whispered. “I can’t do this. I can’t be the mom and the dad all in one. I can’t.”

  She leaned against the kitchen wall and remembered Anders coming after her at 1 a.m., fists raised, voice slurred.

  “But I have to,” she answered herself.

  Then she picked up the phone and called Jeremy’s house.

  Chapter Two

  Tuesday, May 7. 2:23 p.m.

  Being an instant celebrity was overrated, Billy McAllister thought. He pulled his best polo shirt over his head and threw it in the corner of the bedroom. He hated dressing up. And he wasn’t really excited about the high profile, either. He’d spent a few years there trying to keep as low a profile as possible. When you were running drugs between the Florida Keys, having a camera in your face was exactly what you were looking to avoid.

  But these days, Billy didn’t have to hide anymore. And after what had happened on Sheila Key, he really couldn’t hide. Every news crew in Florida wanted to talk to him…and several from points beyond. When you were the sole survivor of a slaughter, you were not only news, you were a star.

  He pressed the button on his answering machine, and the message light flashed from nine to eight as it began to spit out one recording, “Hello, Mr. McCallister. This is Jesse Solms, from WHRV in Tampa. We were wondering if we could stop by tomorrow to talk with you about your experience on Sheila Island…”

  It’s Sheila Key, he thought with irritation. Clearly she wasn’t from South Florida. Of course, he himself hadn’t even known the actual name of that damned pimple of sand when he’d taken the girls and Mark there the week before. He hadn’t needed to know the name, just the location. It had just been a drop-off point for him, back in his marijuana transportation days. He’d pick up enough of the weed to stuff his below-deck cabin full, and then run it out under the light of the stars to the hidden dock on the island at Latitude 25.155286° / Longitude 80.576477°. It had never needed a name, as far as he’d been concerned. He found it by instrument at night beneath the stars, and never saw another human being there.

  That’s why he’d thought it had been the perfect spot to take Jess and Mark and Casey to. There were a thousand tiny islands in the chain of keys, and nobody ever bothered with this one, except midnight drug runners. Ultimately, he’d been caught and done time in jail for drug trafficking. And while he was out of circulation, he figured the runners must have chosen a new drop-off point for their cargo. Certainly they should have if they had any brains at all.

  He’d told that story twenty-five times now in the past twenty-four hours. To newspaper reporters and bleach-blonde haughty bims thrusting microphones in his face like electronic phalluses. It was bad enough to think of the microphone as a dick but the image was made worse by the plastic good looks of the white-toothed girls who pushed the things in his face. That was just wrong.

  The attack of the microphone cocks had started right after the cops and the docs had had their way with him Sunday night. You didn’t come off the dock one day with a lurid story of three of your friends being eaten alive by bugs and just walk back home the same night.

  His first night and day back on the mainland were spent far from his house.

  Which is why now, he really just wanted to put things in order. He hadn’t spent much time here over the past few months, and his trip to Sheila Key was supposed to have been the start of a new life. His life back at university. His life moving ahead. The pursuit of dreams, not drugs, girls not guns.

  Instead, now he was back home, his friends were dead, and everyone wanted to talk to him about flies and spiders.

  Billy saw a pale eight-legged thing scoot up the side of his kitchen cabinet in the fading light of the end of afternoon. He didn’t think for a second before smashing it with the palm of his hand. Spiders. He had always hated the fuckin’ things. But now…

  Behind him, the woman stopped talking and the machine issued a terse beep. Almost immediately, another woman started speaking. It was eerie how similar the dialogue was.

  “Hello, Mr. McAllister. This is Jennie Kiel from WROI in Catchatobie, Florida. We were wondering if you’d consider giving us an interview…”

  Billy shook his head and walked out of the room. “I’ve got gardens to weed,” he grumbled. Never mind that he hadn’t weeded the gardens around his slum of a house ever before. Didn’t matter. He was starting a new life here.

  Again.

  Billy stepped into the small garage and pulled on a pair of canvass gloves that lay on the shelf in the corner, next to the dusty hand shovel. Then he thumbed the garage door opener and squinted at the bright light of the afternoon sun that streamed in.

  He didn’t feel like talking anymore about watching things crawl out of Mark’s mouth as his friend lay dying under the spray of a pesticide as deadly as the creatures it was meant to kill. A deadly pesticide that Billy had unknowingly unleashed on his friends. Billy shook the image of Mark’s face from his head and walked towards the lip of the garage with his gardening tools. He didn’t care if he found worms or water bugs or millipedes or beetles in the overgrown soil near his beat-up bungalow. But if he found any spiders…

  He wasn’t doing any more interviews today.

  Chapter Three

  Tuesday, May 7. 5:14 p.m.

  Someone was living across the street again. The front window blinds were open, and the front lawn was cut. Rachel had noticed that something was different about the place this morning when she’d taken her early morning jog before work. (Okay, it was more of a fast walk, but she was working up to a jog, right?)

  Tonight when she pulled into her drive, for the first time since she’d been in Passanattee, she could actually see into the front room of the house across the street. It was as if someone had taken the place out of storage. It looked different. You could almost smell the stale air sifting away. It had clearly been getting lost in the weeds for a long time. Until now.

  She got out of her car and stood there staring at it for a minute, wondering who had moved in. So far she hadn’t really met many of her neighbors, though she’d seen them racing out of their driveways to wherever. The lady next door—Agnes?—had stopped by on the day that Rachel had moved in to welcome her, but that was the only time they’d talked. And Rachel had been a bit distracted at the time.

  “Mom? Hurry! I have to show you something.”

  Rachel pulled her eyes away from the neighbor’s house and caught the smile of her son, hanging out of the front door. With one hand, she slapped at an insect that buzzed in the air near her shoulder. With the other, she pointed at the front door.

  “Close the screen,” she warned, “you’ll let the bugs in.”

  Then she locked the car and followed her son inside.

  Something twined around her ankles as soon as Rachel stepped into the house. She felt the fur and warmth of the animal before it let out a sound. “What the hell?” she blurted out, as she leapt backwards.

  “Isn’t he cute?” Eric asked. “Tracie Wilkins s
aid I could keep him. Her mom said they can’t keep the whole litter and she wants them to go to someone she knows, not some stranger.”

  Rachel opened her mouth to say, No, he absolutely couldn’t just spring a dachshund on her without warning, and then she had another thought that made her almost as angry. “What were you doing at Tracie Wilkins’s house in the first place?” she asked. “You are supposed to come straight home after school, you know that.”

  Eric’s smile fell. “But I did!” he said. “Tracie brought him here. We talked today at recess and she said she could bring him over after school so we could meet him.”

  Eric crouched down on the carpet with his hands out, and the dog scooted his way, its hindquarters shimmying back and forth like the back end of a slinky. “Tracie’s mom said we could keep him overnight, just to see how we liked him. Can’t we just do that?”

  The boy looked up at her with eyes that were impossible to deny.

  “We don’t have any dog food or a water dish or anything,” Rachel tried to argue, but before she was even finished, her son was pointing to a silver dish on the tile of the kitchen floor. “Tracie brought that stuff with her,” he said. “She said it could be just like a sleepover.”

  In her head, Rachel thought, Well, you won’t be the one getting up at 4 a.m. to answer a whining puppy two hours before you have to get up to go to work, but she held her tongue when she saw the look in her son’s eyes. It was a look that hadn’t been there very much in the past few months. The divorce and the move had been hard on Eric. Maybe harder on him truthfully than on her—after all, this was the first time his life had been uprooted ever. He acted so grown up sometimes she could almost forget he was only ten. Just a kid…and everything he’d grown to trust in his first few years had just been ripped apart. Flushed away overnight.