Fat Charlie sighed. “Dad. I don’t wear hats. It’ll look stupid. I’ll look a complete tit. Why do you always try to embarrass me?”
In the fading light, the old man looked at his son. “You think I’d lie to you? Son, all you need to wear a hat is attitude. And you got that. You think I’d tell you you looked good if you didn’t? You look real sharp. You don’t believe me?”
Fat Charlie said, “Not really.”
“Look,” said his father. He pointed over the side of the bridge. The water beneath them was still and smooth as a mirror, and the man looking up at him from the water looked real sharp in his new green hat.
Fat Charlie looked up to tell his father that maybe he had been wrong, but the old man was gone.
He stepped off the bridge into the dusk.
“RIGHT. I WANT TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE HE IS. WHERE DID he go? What have you done to him?”
“I didn’t do anything. Lord, child,” said Mrs. Higgler. “This never happened the last time.”
“It looked like he was beamed up to the mothership,” said Benjamin. “Cool. Real-life special effects.”
“I want you to bring him back,” said Daisy, fiercely. “I want him back now.”
“I don’t even know where he is,” said Mrs. Higgler. “And I didn’t send him there. He do that himself.”
“Anyway,” said Clarissa. “What if he’s off doing what he’s doing and we make him come back? We could ruin it all.”
“Exactly,” said Benjamin. “Like beaming the landing party back, halfway through their mission.”
Daisy thought about this and was irritated to realize that it made sense—as much as anything made sense these days, anyway.
“If nothing else is happening,” said Clarissa, “I ought to go back to the restaurant. Make sure everything’s all right.”
Mrs. Higgler sipped her coffee. “Nothin‘ happenin’ here,” she agreed.
Daisy slammed her hand down on the table. “Excuse me. We’ve got a killer out there. And now Fat Charlie’s beamed up to the mastership.”
“Mothership,” said Benjamin.
Mrs. Higgler blinked. “Okay,” she said. “We should do something. What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Daisy and she hated herself for saying it. “Kill time, I suppose.” She picked up the copy of the Williamstown Courier that Mrs. Higgler had been reading and began to flip through it.
The story about the missing tourists, the women who hadn’t gone back to their cruise ship was a column on page three. The two at the house, said Grahame Coats in her head. Did you think I’d believe they were from the ship?
At the end of the day, Daisy was a cop.
“Get me the phone,” she said.
“Who are you calling?”
“I think we’ll start with the minister of tourism and the chief of police, and we’ll go on from there.”
THE CRIMSON SUN WAS SHRINKING ON THE HORIZON. SPIDER, had he not been Spider, would have despaired. On the island, in that place, there was a clean line between day and night, and Spider watched the last red crumb of sun being swallowed by the sea. He had his stones and the two stakes.
He wished he had fire.
He wondered when the moon would be up. When the moon rose, he might have a chance.
The sun set—the final smudge of red sank into the dark sea, and it was night.
“Anansi’s child,” said a voice from out of the darkness. “Soon enough, I shall feed. You will not know I am there until you feel my breath on the back of your head. I stood above you, while you were staked out for me, and I could have crunched through your neck then and there, but I thought better of it. Killing you in your sleep would have brought me no pleasure. I want to feel you die. I want you to know why I have taken your life.”
Spider threw a rock toward where he thought the voice was coming from, and heard it crash harmlessly into the undergrowth.
“You have fingers,” said the voice, “but I have claws sharper than knives. You have your two legs, but I have four legs that will never tire, that can run ten times as fast as you ever will and keep on running. Your teeth can eat meat, if it has been made soft and tasteless by the fire, for you have little monkey teeth, good for chewing soft fruit and crawling bugs; but I have teeth that rend and tear the living flesh from the bones, and I can swallow it while the lifeblood still fountains into the sky.”
And then Spider made a noise. It was a noise that could be made without a tongue, without even opening his lips. It was a “meh” noise of amused disdain. You may be all these things, Tiger, it seemed to say, but so what? All the stories there ever were are Anansi’s. Nobody tells Tiger stories.
There was a roar from the darkness, a roar of fury and frustration.
Spider began to hum the tune of the “Tiger Rag.” It’s an old song, good for teasing tigers with: “Hold that tiger,” it goes. “Where’s that tiger?”
When the voice came next from the darkness, it was nearer.