Caught in the Web Emmy Ellis (best ereader for textbooks txt) 📖

Robin left the insect alcove situated on one side of the office and sat at the old scarred desk. On the computer, from the past twenty-four hours of surveillance, he brought up the saved file of the camera that was trained on Harry’s enclosure. He searched from the second he and Nathan had left the previous evening, at seven o’clock.

On the screen, the tarantula room was dark apart from a dim light inside Harry’s glass case. Despite Robin using the fast-forward function, it was as if he stared at a static image of Harry sitting on his flat rock in the centre of the enclosure. Robin’s eyes glazed, and he blinked several times, peering in the bottom right corner to see the time.

After midnight.

Nathan sighed over his shoulder. It sounded shaky. Was he scared? Of a bollocking from Mr Clarke, or was it unease because a creature was missing? Or both? Robin could understand both. Mr Clarke was an arsehole when he got going on a rant, and as for the elusive Harry…well, they might not have searched as thoroughly as they’d thought and—

“Stop!” Nathan said.

Robin jabbed his finger down on the mouse. He hadn’t seen anything different from what he’d been staring at already and frowned. “What? There’s nothing going on. Harry’s still there, look.”

“Yes, but go back a few frames. Slowly.” Nathan pointed to the right-hand side of the screen. “Get ready to watch closely, just there.” His pressed his fingertip to the monitor. “There, okay?”

“Okay.”

Robin changed the speed of the search and went backwards, staring intently at where Nathan had indicated—the darkened area to the right of Harry’s enclosure, at the section of Formica fascia that separated Harry from Freda in her home next door. “Um, I don’t see anything.”

“Keep watching,” Nathan said.

Robin strained to spot anything significant—and failed. He wanted to tell Nathan the footage had played a trick on him, that maybe there had been a jolt on the screen or something, but he kept his mouth shut. The poor bloke was coiled tight. No sense in upsetting him further.

Then came a miniscule movement, a shadow that was a degree darker than the Formica panel. The rounded corner of something?

“Right, go back a tad more, to just before that appears,” Nathan said. “And I’ll put the speakers on.”

“But it doesn’t look like anything much.” Robin did what Nathan had suggested.

“But at the same time, it isn’t meant to be there, whatever it is.”

“No, you’re right, it isn’t.”

Robin chewed on his lower lip, waiting for the shadow ‘corner’ to show up again. There it was, the bottom of it about three inches wide. Then the screen cut it off, the longer side going right up to the top of the monitor.

“Come on, my pretty,” someone whispered. A man.

Robin jumped. “Fuck me, did you hear that?”

“Yeah, I bloody well did. Christ…” Nathan leant forward. “Pause this one and bring up Freda’s footage, at the same point in time. No, just a bit before that.”

Glad of something to do that would take his mind off the creepy-as-hell video voice, Robin paused Harry’s file then accessed Freda’s and skipped frames until he reached the right point. Once again, he selected the slow fast forward and waited. Freda was there, in the left-hand corner, right below her warming light. Then her whole enclosure was obliterated by a shadow, the screen almost black.

“What the hell?” Robin breathed.

“Fuck,” Nathan said. “Oh God.”

“Come on, my pretty…” The disembodied voice.

Spooked to hell and back, Robin pressed the stop icon, his hand shaking on the mouse so much the white cursor appeared as a demented, shivering arrow.

“One enclosure up. Above Freda. Juliette’s footage,” Nathan said. “Watch that one.”

Robin obeyed. Juliette sat inside her hidey hole, her two front legs poking out. Then the shadow came, except it didn’t cover the whole screen as it had with Freda’s. Blackened into a silhouette by Juliette’s warming light was the shape of a head and shoulders.

“Come on, my pretty…”

And whoever had said that lifted his arm—lifted the Formica panel above Juliette’s enclosure. Opened the lid of the glass terrarium. Reached inside with a gloved hand and tugged at her front leg. Brought her out of her safe haven. He let her go, and Juliette raised both front legs, clearly showing she wasn’t happy.

“Now, now,” the man said. “No need to be nasty about it.”

What the fucking hell…?

Robin’s stomach didn’t feel too good. His muscles clenched painfully again, and anxiety roiled in the centre of his chest. A feeling of utter dread seeped into him, and he wanted to turn away but at the same time keep watching.

The man hovered his hand over Juliette and clawed his fingers and thumb, but she reared up on her four back legs. “Oh, you’re going to be awkward, are you?” His voice was soft, similar to a coaxing father or teacher. “Then I’ll choose another. You could have been famous, you know, but now you won’t be. It’s the principle of the thing. You didn’t behave the way you should. No hard feelings, eh?”

He stepped to the left, out of view. Juliette remained standing on her back legs, static, possibly ready to pounce if he bothered her again. So the first shadow Robin had seen on Harry’s footage, the ‘corner’, had been the man’s elbow and arm as he’d tried to take Juliette out.

“Back to Harry’s, quick,” Nathan said. “Shift forward on it.”

Robin did so, and sure enough, the man had moved across to Harry, his back blacking out the screen. Without waiting for instruction, Robin opened up the file that showed that whole wall of the arachnid room, all of the tarantula enclosures in front of the camera, twenty-four lit boxes surrounded by darkness. He found the correct time then