“Well, more of a hybrid really. You can’t bioengineer spiders to this size—their frames won’t take the gravitational pull. So she’s part cybernetic. She may look like a spider, but she also has canine DNA. She’s clever, Ma.”
Ellen tries to make sense of what she’s hearing. She’s never understood exactly what it is her daughter does for a living, although Zelda’s tried to explain it to her countless times. “Zelda, are you saying that you... that you
made
this thing?”
“Ja. Gorgeous, isn’t she?”
Zelda places a hand on top of the monster’s head, and the dam of terror and disgust in Ellen’s chest bursts. She stumbles down the steps and hares around to the front of the cottage, ignoring her protesting joints and Zelda’s entreaties to wait. She slams the front door behind her, backs down the hall.
She hears the creak of Zelda’s approaching footsteps. “Ma?”
“Is it gone?”
Zelda sighs. “I’ve put her back in the box. Look, I understand your reaction—”
“Why... why would you create something like that? It’s an abomination—a monster!” She’s always been proud that Zelda hasn’t allowed her humble background to shackle her intellect, but now her daughter’s intelligence scares her. Zelda’s always been different—intense, unemotional, more at ease with books than people—but she has to wonder: has her daughter lost her mind?
“We’re developing them for the UK government, got the contract after the Birmingham food riots. You know, playing on Westerners’ instinctual fear of arachnids to control the herd mentality. Charlotte’s my prototype—the ones we’re working on now are three times her size. We’re thinking they could be the future of home security and mob management.”
“But... why did you bring it here?”
“Isn’t it obvious? If you insist on living alone out here in the middle of nowhere, you need some protection. Especially now that Zizu’s gone.”
“How many more times, Zelda? I am fine here.”
Ellen has given in to her daughter’s insistence that she secure the cottage—shielding the windows with burglar bars and locking her doors at night—but that’s as far as she’s prepared to go. She’s lived here for sixty years, is determined to die here and take her place next to Manny in the graveyard behind the main house of the farmstead. Ellen isn’t afraid of gangs and skelms; it’s been years since the farm was last targeted. No, the threat is much closer to home, but she would never dream of discussing that with Zelda.
Zelda suddenly becomes very still. “Ma. How did Zizu die?”
Ellen does her best to look her daughter in the eye. “I told you, he choked on a chicken bone. Don’t try to change the subject. You must take that thing away, Zelda.”
“Listen, Ma. She’s cheap to look after—won’t cost a thing. She doesn’t eat anything.”
“How is that possible?”
“Solar power. She needs sunlight to recharge her power cells.” Zelda sighs again, and for the first time, Ellen notices the anxiety lines scoring her daughter’s forehead. ‘We’re rethinking this for the European climate, of course. Look, just give it some time, okay? If you really don’t want her after a week or so, I’ll make a plan to fetch her. Just give her a chance. Please, Ma? Just for my peace of mind?’ Zelda shifts uncomfortably. “And... I’d rather you didn’t let anyone see her. I didn’t really get the authorisation to bring her here. The company thinks she’s been incinerated so that the tech doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“Zelda! You mean you stole it?”
“It’s not as simple as that. Look, Charlotte can stay in her box out there most of the time. You can just let her out at night and when you’re working in the garden. She only needs an hour of sunlight a day. And how many visitors do you get anyway?”
‘Well, Rina comes for tea once a week.” Ellen doesn’t miss the expression of distaste that flits over her daughter’s face. Zelda’s always careful to avoid Rina on her rare visits back home. Throughout Zelda’s childhood, Rina played the role of the rich white madam, dispensing patronising advice and hand-me-downs when the mood took her. Manny was only the farm’s foreman after all, spent his life labouring for Rina’s late husband. But as the last of the neighbouring farming families succumbed to the drought and sold out to the fracking companies, Ellen and Rina had no choice but to come to an understanding.
“You can keep Charlotte out of sight when that—when she’s here. Now listen, Ma. I have to get back, but I’ve downloaded your voice pattern, she’ll obey you, do what you say. Same commands as when you trained Zizu, remember? She’s not here to hurt you, Ma; she’s here to protect you.”
“But it looks dangerous, Zelda. What if it attacks someone?”
“She won’t do anything unless you tell her to, or if she senses you’re in danger. She’s basically just a guard dog, Ma.”
“That is no dog!”
E
LLEN WAITS UNTIL
she can no longer see the dust cloud trailing her daughter’s bakkie, then shuffles into the kitchen to wash up the breakfast dishes. She can hardly bear to be in here; the window overlooks the stoep where that thing—that
monster
—skulks in its crate.
She’s packing away the plates when she hears the toot of a horn. She bustles to the front of the cottage, sees Rina’s old Mercedes bumping along the dirt track leading to her gate.
Ellen smoothes her hair, hovers on the stoep as Rina heaves her bulk out of the driver’s seat, a milk tart balanced in one hand.
“Ellen!” Rina calls. “Shall we not sit on the back stoep where it’s cooler?”
“Let’s go inside,” Ellen says. “I will put the fan on.”
Ellen makes a jug of Oros and carries it into the lounge, where Rina is already cutting herself a healthy slice of milk tart.
“Ag, Ellen,” Rina says. “I feel so bad for you about Zizu. It’s a bad way to go, né? I was saying to Koebus that he must have eaten a poisoned rat. How else could such a thing have happened?”
Ellen doesn’t voice her suspicions, all of which concern Jannie, Rina’s son, who left the farm years ago to set up some kind of investment business in Bloemfontein. Jannie is always zooming down to the farm in his sinister black BMW, armed with brochures for luxury retirement villages. “Feet first, skattie,” Rina often says to Ellen after one of his visits. “That’s the only way I’m leaving here. But shame, my Jannie, he means well.”
Ellen doesn’t think Jannie means well. She thinks—knows—he’s a bully, his piggy eyes full of greed, desperate for his mother to die, desperate for Ellen to give up her claim to the land on which she’s entitled to live until her death, so that he can sell it off to the fracking companies to be raped for fuel. Ja, Ellen thinks bitterly. Rape is something he knows well. She has never forgotten the day that ten-year-old Zelda came home, her dress ripped, knees torn, accusing Jannie and one of his friends of dragging her into the shed. That incident had been covered up against Ellen’s wishes. It had poisoned her last few years with Manny, who’d traded their silence in exchange for an expensive boarding-school education for their only daughter.
Ellen pretends to listen while Rina rattles on about the borehole maintenance that’s needed, wonders what the old boeremeisie would say if she knew what was lurking in a box, just metres away from where they’re sitting.
Rina eventually stops talking, taps Ellen’s knee. “I must go. Jannie is coming to visit this afternoon and I want to make some rusks. I’ll come by on Wednesday as usual to take you into town.”
Ellen accompanies Rina to the gate, watches her drive away. As she walks back along the path, she stumbles over one of Zizu’s old bones lying half-buried in the dust.
She allows the tears to slide down her cheeks, relieved there is no one around to see her.
I
T’S PAST MIDNIGHT
and Ellen still can’t sleep. She kicks her blanket off her legs, decides to make herself a pot of Rooibos tea and honey.
She pads down the hallway, fumbles for the light switch, freezes when she smells a faint odour that has no place in her kitchen.
She breathes in deeply, realises that someone is smoking dagga outside the kitchen window.
Senses heightened, she listens to the shuffle of footsteps on concrete. A low whistle. A creak.
She holds her breath, hears nothing for several minutes but the usual night sounds, the chirp of the crickets, the cottage settling after a hot day. Just as she’s convinced herself that the intruder must have fled—foiled by the burglar bars—an inhuman shriek slices through the air followed by the clump and skid of running footsteps.
Ellen darts forward, leans over the sink, fumbles a hand through the bars and yanks the window closed. She steps back, pulse throbbing in her throat. When she can stand the tension no more, she peers out and into the darkness of the stoep beyond. The feeble moonlight casts deep shadows, and it takes a while for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
As far as she can tell from her position, the stoep is empty save for her washing basket, her herb pots and that box. But... there’s something not right about the crate. She steps onto her tiptoes, nose now almost pressed against the glass, willing it to be just a trick of the shadows. It isn’t.
The door of the crate is open.
For a horrible second a solid darkness fills the window, flicking away before she has a chance to scream. She blinks, looks at the muddy reflection of her wide eyes in the glass. Frozen with shock, she listens to a faint pattering sound on the roof.
She clings onto the edge of the sink, willing herself to move; she needs to get to the phone. Lurching towards the kitchen door, she bashes her hip on the table, staggers into the hallway, grabs the receiver. She’s about to dial when she remembers what Zelda confessed this afternoon: that she wasn’t authorised to remove the monster from her company’s offices.
If the police arrive and find the spider, then Zelda will get into trouble. And what about the intruder? For all she knows, there might be a body outside.
She dials Zelda’s number, listens to a voice message. She has no choice but to wait until she calls her back. Hip throbbing, where it encountered with the table, she hobbles through the cottage, soaked with cold sweat, double-checking that all her windows are shut, for once glad of the burglar bars Zelda insisted she install.
She doesn’t think it can get in.
Then she sits down on the edge of her bed to wait for the night to end.
D
ISORIENTATED,
E
LLEN BLINKS,
sees dust motes dancing in the sunlight slanting through her bedroom window. She doesn’t remember falling asleep, realises the phone must have woken her up. She’s stiff, but she manages to heave herself into the hallway and answer it before it stops ringing.
Expecting it to be Zelda, she’s thrown when she hears Rina saying: “Ellen? Is everything okay with you?”
Ellen tries to collect her thoughts, manages a hoarse, “Ja.”
“Jannie says he’s heard there’s a gang operating in the area. He asked me to call to check you are all right.”
Ha, Ellen thinks. If there is a gang, she knows who the ringleader is. Then, with a chill, she remembers the empty crate. Whoever was loitering outside her window hadn’t been able to resist looking inside it.
“Tell Jannie I’m fine,” she says, hanging up. She tries Zelda’s number again, listens once more to voicemail. She leaves a brief message, then walks cautiously into the kitchen, peers out of the window again, leaning as far forward as she dares. The stoep is empty except for the open crate and her rows of herb pots.
She’s horrified when she sees that it’s past nine—she’s two hours late to feed and water the chickens. She can’t let them suffer. But how can she bear to go outside with that thing running free?
She waits another hour for Zelda to call her back. No longer able to bear the thought of the thirst the chickens must be experiencing, she arms herself with a knobkerrie and eases open the front door, the blazing sun doing nothing to reassure her. Trying to convince herself that Zelda would never bring something to the farm that might harm her, she walks around the side of the house, eyes scanning every inch of the sparse vegetation around the cottage. There’s nowhere for the monster to hide. Could it have fled—disappeared into the landscape? She shields her eyes to scope out the abandoned shells of the other labourers’ cottages in the distance, but can see no sign of movement in the rubble around them.
When she reaches the back yard, something makes her turn to look back at the cottage. She yelps, claps a hand over her mouth. It’s there—lurking on the wall next to the kitchen window, half hidden in the shadows cast by the stoep’s roof, its abnormal size giving it the appearance of an optical illusion.
She shudders, backs towards the chicken coop. She doesn’t dare take her eyes off the thing. Then the worst happens. It twitches, raises a front leg, and leaps.
She can’t believe how fast it moves—limbs pump with a fluid, obscene efficiency, blurring towards her. She trips over her feet, lands painfully on her haunches. She throws herself onto her stomach, squeezes her eyes shut, hears herself whimpering. Wet warmth spreads down her thighs as her bladder lets go.
She waits.
Hears a crunch.
Opens her eyes.
The spider is just metres from her, something glistening in the dust in front of it. Ellen props herself up on an elbow, sees blood, pale yellow innards, white curved bone.
Realises she’s looking at the remains of a snake.
Ellen wracks her brain for the voice commands Zelda taught her before she left, tries to speak, but nothing emerges. She tries again, “Charlotte, in your box.” The spider doesn’t move. She clears her throat. “Charlotte. Home.”
Ellen almost heaves with relief when the spider backtracks, moving with that same sickening mechanical grace. It skitters up the steps, disappears inside the crate.
Ellen struggles to her feet, runs her hands over her body. She’s been lucky, she can’t feel any obvious damage. Ants are already investigating the snake corpse, which is nothing more than ripped innards and crushed vertebrae. Judging by a scrap of dark brown skin attached to a bloody chunk, it was once a cobra. She kicks dust over it; she doesn’t have the energy to bury it now.