The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,59

Kirsty.

The body of the first spider was stuck to the sole of his shoe. He whacked the second spider, then a third.

Kirsty shrieked. She had never let Jamie kill a spider before. No matter how much she hated and feared them, she would never allow one to be harmed. Now she wanted to see them crushed. She wanted them all dead. ‘Kill them!’

He killed them all, one by one, then sat back, panting, his heart thumping. He looked at the little wrecked bodies and immediately felt remorseful. They were only spiders, but they were so small and helpless. It was Kirsty’s fault for getting so hysterical.

He turned towards her. ‘Look what you made me do!’

‘What?’ She looked up at him. Her face was streaked with tears. He realised how petrified she had been, and now he felt remorse for shouting at her. He sat on the edge of the sofa and hugged her. She was shaking.

‘Where did they all come from, Jamie?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart. I really don’t know.’

‘They were coming straight for me. They wanted to get me.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

She wiped her eyes with a trembling hand. ‘I bet it was them.’

‘Who?’

‘Them. Lucy and Chris. They sent them up here to get me.’

‘How could they have?’

‘Easily! They could have put them under the door, or I don’t know, maybe they trained them.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know what Lucy said about Mary being a witch. Well, maybe it’s really Lucy who’s the witch. She’s evil enough. I bet they poisoned us last night. We saw her go into the kitchen in the restaurant. And then they made those spiders come up here to get me.’

‘Kirsty, you should hear yourself. And how would they know you’re scared of spiders?’

‘They listen to us all the time. They’ve probably got it recorded.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘They’re probably listening to us right now, gauging our reaction, laughing at us. Oh God.’

Jamie shushed her. ‘Kirsty, this is crazy. Lucy and Chris are nasty, twisted people. We know that. But they’re not witches. They’re not able to command spiders and send them after people.’

Suddenly, the flat was filled with a deafening series of beeps.

‘Shit! The dinner!’ Jamie jumped up and ran towards the oven. Black tendrils of smoke emerged from the kitchen, setting off the smoke alarm which emitted a shrill, maddening beeping noise. He took the alarm down from its position on the wall, turned it off and then opened the oven door. A cloud rose up and made him cough. He pulled out the dinner. The chips looked like charcoal pencils; the lasagne was ruined.

Kirsty came over and looked at it. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m not hungry any more, anyway.’

Jamie opened the other front window to let out the smoke. Then he dug out the dustpan and brush and swept up the bodies of the dead spiders, throwing them out of the window. He deliberately let them fall onto the Newtons’ doorstep. Hopefully Lucy was scared of spiders too.

After that, Kirsty made him check the bed, the bath, under the sofa and wherever else there was a nook or cranny that might possibly hold a spider. To his great relief, he didn’t find any.

Kirsty didn’t sleep that night. She lay awake, staring at the ceiling, imagining that giant spiders were in the bed, or were pattering across the bedroom carpet, coming towards her; coming to get her.

Sixteen

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘What?’ Jamie was taken aback by the question.

Mike leaned forward across the desk, his face framed by two computer monitors. ‘I said, What are you going to do about it?’

Jamie fell silent. He held a ballpoint pen between finger and thumb, tapped it on the edge of his keyboard, stared blindly at the screensaver on his monitor. All around him people tapped away at their keyboards, had important telephone conversations, wandered to and from the coffee machine. The server in the corner hummed noisily; the fax machine bleeped. But Jamie was oblivious to it all.

What was he going to do about it?

He had come into work this morning with the need to talk to someone, to pour it all out, to get it off his chest. He didn’t expect catharsis, just some relief. Last night, at 3 a.m., Lucy and Chris had played extracts from War of the Worlds – the seventies ‘rock opera’ – not at full volume, but just loud enough for Jamie to hear it and for it to come seeping into