They carried John’s body into the streets above, and Tom had to wipe the shit off of John’s face to see if his eyes were open.
There was shit in his eyes, thought Tom as he told the two boys his story. Things could’ve been worse, though. John was alive, just ‘not responsive,’ as the nurses had said. As for Tom Treeson, he was just glad he’d worn pants that day. Otherwise, the spider would’ve bitten a chunk out of his calf or worse, slipped into his shorts. Either way, Tom Treeson would’ve ended up in the infirmary besides John if not for his jeans.
IV
Andrew saw the shadow pass over Nick’s face as he heard the story. The part about the crawlies especially terrified Andrew (he assumed the ‘crawlies’ were spiders, but didn’t ask.)
When Tom finished speaking, Nick was silent. No one made a sound, and the bustle of the markets closing for the day seemed far away. Nick finally said:
“Will he be all right then?”
Tom looked at Andrew for a moment. Then he looked down. “There’s no telling. The nurses say he’s breathin’ and such, but that he’s gone ‘comatoes’ and ‘non-responsive’. Sounded like a bunch of squabble to me, but I don’t know much about doctoring,” said Tom, with mystery in his eyes. “But as far as I’m concerned, they’ve no cure for the bites. The nurses said that the poison is long-lasting, and that not all patients wake up from their sleep. Sometimes they just don’t snap out of it, you know it?” Tom shook his head. “And ye know whose fault this all is, dont ya?”
Nick looked up slowly at the grand clock tower. “The lord of spiders,” he whispered, and now Andrew knew Nick wasn’t telling him something.
Tom Treeson nodded. “Old St. Gerardo. That luney’s sent his crawlies down through the sewers to feed,” he said, spitting while saying feed. He straightened up on his horse, and looked off into the distance.
“I’ll take my leave of ye, and give ye something to chew on: don’t be lurkin’ round here tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Every maintenance man in town has had it with the old ‘saint’, or whatever he calls himself. Joe Freeman from the tavern downtown ain’t so fond of him neither, and we’re all gonna have a word with him.”
Andrew knew what that meant. Whoever ‘Old St. Gerardo’ was, his head was likely to end up on a pole, like in those westerns where the Indians got out of hand.
“But the door to the tower’s sealed! Oh Tom, you’ll never get into the Clock Tower.” Nick cried. All three boys looked over to the door. It was round and wooden, like something out a fairy tale. Nick and Tom continued to squabble, but Andrew kept his eyes on the door.
Am I meant to go through that door? His heart jumped at the thought.
“We know it,” Tom answered. “The wizard’s sealed it shut, sure. Keep us out. But we’ve got a way around his tricks. Stop by the tavern on the way home and maybe you’ll see what we’ve got up our sleeves.”
Tom rode off soon after. Nick, though in shock from this news, jumped when he read the time on the clock. “Oh! Andrew, we’ve got to get home real quick. My aunt and uncle don’ like me out past sunset, you know.” Andrew wanted to comment that he didn’t blame them, considering the spiders and all. He chose to hold his tongue instead. Before they left the town square, however, Andrew shot one last glance at the wooden door at the foot of the tower. He had a feeling he was going to open that door.
God help me when I do, he thought.
V
The sun had set, and the city lit up. As Andrew and Nick walked to Nick’s aunt and uncle’s house, Andrew saw the walls around him come to life. It was the same graffiti which had stained the face of the clock tower. The city walls were covered with these strange drawings and words. The words were indiscernible to Andrew, and Nick had no idea what language it was. Andrew thought it was German or something.
The colors of the graffiti lit up the town in the place of electrical light. Shades of fluorescent green and orange and pink radiated from the walls to light the boys’ way. Andrew had never seen such a colorful place in his whole life. His neighborhood in Nayreton got very dark at night, surrounded by the thick darkness of the forest. Here, however, the night was electric. Nick claimed the graffiti was written by oddly dressed people in the town.
“You don’t see them much ‘cept when they write on the walls,” the boy explained. “It’s a weird thing, but they talk like little kids and wear new clothing that only little kids wear. My aunt calls them ‘kid adults’ cause they never grow up, or at least they don’t want to.” Nick added that all of this was beyond him.
“They sound a bit like hipsters,” Andrew said. Nick didn’t know what those were, and before Andrew could explain he spotted a few hipsters. Except, they weren’t quite hipsters. They were certainly outstanding and strange looking though. They congregated outside of Joe Freedman’s tavern, looking up at a man standing upon wooden scaffolding. The hipster-looking people wore high multicolored socks and tunics that were as fluorescent as the graffiti on the walls. The men wore tight clothing that looked like it belonged to women. The women had their hair short and wore hats to look like men. Either gender wore large glasses without lenses in them. Andrew had seen oddly dressed individuals like these in TV commercials back home, advertising the new iPhone or something along those lines. Here were something like those people, except they looked like they’d come from a different century.
The man on the scaffolding was a tall lanky fellow with a patchy beard and sullen grey complexion. He wore an old patched suit, and Andrew thought the hipsters must have picked it out for him: it was bright yellow. Nick informed him this was Joe Freeman.
“Let’s watch from a distance,” Nick advised. He and Andrew stuck on their side of the street. “I don’t want my friends from work to see me, they’d want me to join up.” Andrew saw Tom Treeson gathered around some men who were not dressed as extravagantly as the hipsters, and knew them to be the maintenance men.
So Nick’s only just met me, and he’d rather stick with me than his friends? Andrew thought. It was a comforting and concerning thought. The two boys listened in to Freeman’s sermon:
“He has terrorized this city. He has made a mess of what Sunsetville truly is,” Freeman proclaimed. His eyes shone eagerly. His voice was high-pitched and nasally, cracking at every other word. “And what is Sunsetville?”
“Our home!” came the response from the crowd. Freeman surveyed them with a stern glance. He looked as though he had neither shaved nor slept in days.
“Let me tell you all a story, friends and neighbors,” Freeman said. He straightened. “My bar always brings in good business. I used to be a little fool, like all of you, thinking things were good here and all. Thinking that I could make it in this city. Well, I was wrong. Dead wrong! We’re all fools, don’t you know it? Well I didn’t, not til that saint came into the bar and played up a scene.
“He told me that night that he was tired of my ‘sin’ and ‘inhumanity.’ Said alcohol and the ‘harlots’ upstairs were turning the town into a mess. So I tell’s him, my bar’s just fine- it’s what this town needs, considering the drought and all. The dry and thirsty men can come to the bar to quench their thirst and such. So he looks me in the eye, and he’s tells me he’d show me a dry spell. So he waves his hand, and laughs real eerily. Real creepy, that laugh.” The listeners murmured in silent agreement.
“I told him to get the hell out of my bar, and he tips me a wink and tells me things will be real dry round here for a while. Then he leaves,