Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Chapter 6


Northern Range
Hilltop House





Fiona propped her bike against the leaning tree and looked at the place where she'd been born and grew up.  She peeked through one window, pushing aside roses and vines, then stepped back and let it go.

The ivy had not yet accomplished what it had long threatened to do - tear down her home.  Nobody ever would, not this house. 


She opened the door into the little foyer.  It was unlocked but nobody was likely to risk even opening the door so there was no reason to lock it.  Her father had left the mirror and the little table behind when he emptied the house.  Why?  'Why' was always such a useless question.


The empty room was lit with the morning light and as empty as the foyer.  There were webs on the walls where paintings would hang in any normal house.  The great spider on the wall across from her took a careful turn in her web, and said, "Hello Fiona Dirac."

Fiona smiled, happy for the first time since she left her sister.  "Hello Lady.  It's very good to see you again."

"We have missed you," the spider replied.


Crossing the room, trying to ignore an echo she hadn't anticipated, Fiona looked through the porch doors at black painted rails and the yard beyond it. She asked the spider, "Am I alone?"

The Lady plucked at her web. Another web met it through the cracked roof, and the spiders outside would feel her question and send it on to others, and they would answer if they could. They formed a great army, an army that sometimes ate their own but would protect the family in the house to the very last one of them. 

"The Outside says no one is there."


Other than the kitchen cabinets, only the dining table and two dining chairs remained.  Everything else was gone.

There had been a mirror on the fireplace, photos of her mother and her father, Viv at a little kids' dance, the dogs in an antique frame, the silver baby cup with her name on it.  It was all gone.  He hadn't brought it to Sandy Point, she was sure he hadn't thrown it away.  What happened to it?


She walked back into the middle of the room intending to go to the shed in the back and look for camping gear.  Halfway there she looked down at the floor.

The stain was wide and dark and scuffed.  Her father had not allowed her or Viv to return to the house after her mother 'disappeared' so she had never seen any signs of that struggle.  This was the sign. 

"Lady is that my mother's blood?"

The spider edged her way a little closer.  "Your mother did not die here.  The blood on the floor is not hers."

Her father would have known if her mother was dead, she'd been sure of that although Vivian had argued otherwise and Fiona had finally agreed with her.  He may have been wrong; he may have thought what he saw was a living person, or believed that not seeing her meant she was living. Whatever she had been working on could have clouded his sight.  Perhaps it hadn't though.  This...whatever happened, it had been brutal.  "What do you mean?  What happened to her?"



"Five humans came from outside.  The Upstairs came down.  They killed three.  Your mother was not dead when they took her.  They took her where we could not see.  Fiona Dirac, we did what we could do to stop them, all the Upstairs, the Inside and the Outside, all of us."

The Upstairs.  The Upstairs were the last line of defense for a very old and unusual family.  If the Upstairs spiders attacked, and there were thousands of them, they would have attacked in one great crawling mass running up legs and arms and neck and face into hair and eyes and open mouths, all the thousands biting and biting again, no way to run away from them or knock them off because of the sheer overwhelming numbers.

She hoped some of those people died of shock.

But for all their ferocity, the Upstairs had not been able to save her mother, and it would have cost them hundreds of their own lives to try.


An old stack of wood still leaned against the wall beside the fireplace. Fiona shoved it into the hearth and lit the fire with the old silver lighter hidden to one side as it always had been. The heat touched her face and would fill the room today and tonight. She was very safe here.

Behind her the Lady Spider asked, "Fiona have you come to stay?"


Jay Lombardo was meeting her at the pier at noon.  Something that had broken through here had made a mistake, and she had a partner now who would help her track it down.  

"No Lady, I haven't.  I've come to hunt."

10 comments:

  1. This didn't end how I expected it too but I loved it! It was really different with the spider taking but then was that just Fiona answering the questions she was asking herself in her own head?

    The house looks awesome too. Despite looking so run down it has so much character and I bet a lot of stories to tell. ;)

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    1. Fiona is really hearing the spider although 'hearing' is probably not the best description. She hears ghosts so a living spider probably isn't that much harder. She doesn't know the answers to her questions, and the spider's answers weren't those she was expecting. Fiona believed her mother died in the house, and she didn't.

      Oh thank you about the house! I worked such a long time on that house, redid and redid it. I couldn't find what I thought I wanted and then when I did find it, it looked awful. You know how it is with houses: setting them up takes an unbelievable amount of time. I love that house though. I'd already built it, never had anyone to live in it so now it has a purpose.

      Thank you thank you for reading and leaving me a comment. It means so much to me.

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  2. Is Fiona a black widow?

    This was fascinating. I'm curious what happened with her mother.

    "but it had accomplished what the tree only threatened to do and claimed the house" - I loved that line. I am partial to ivy anyway, but it was really fun.

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    1. You know, I hadn't thought about Fiona being a black widow. No, she's not, but that's such an interesting idea. I might steal it from you...:)

      I've been working out what happened to that family. My math isn't up to the challenge but I'm pretty fond of a particular astrophysicist who may help me.

      Ivy and I had an agreement that Ivy has broken. My house is built on a hill with a long steep drop, deeply eroded and dangerous, and very dark. Ivy was hanging around the area so I put some on the slope. Ivy helped me out. No more landslides! Hurray for Ivy! Well, as you know, Ivy didn't stay in the ditch. Ivy is now up my chimney and crawling across the roof and over the windows. It's an old house so it looks picturesque but Ivy has become a bad bad thing.

      Getting this comment from you makes me really happy. Thank you so much. I don't write or create in a world like yours and others that I admire a great deal and I'm very grateful you read any of this. Thank you.

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  3. This house is AMAZING!! My goodness it must have taken so long to find all the distressed items. Fiona being able to talk to the spider was a surprise but very intriguing. It seems like so much more than meets the eye happened in this house and with her family. I can't wait to see where this leads. On a side note are her eyes those contacts that Veron Asher used to make?

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    1. OMG that house!! Yeah, it took freaking forever to do. I had a lot I wanted to use but it wasn't worn out, and I hadn't worked with distressed lots before so I had almost nothing useful. I found that most of the cc available now is either apocalyptic,'college torn-up' or designed for poverty challenges. I gave up on furniture. Wall overlays are great though.

      I have sort of a plan for Fiona and her ability to hear spiders. It's connected to sound itself (insofar as it's a wave when it's generated, not a particle), and thought that since Fiona can see ghosts she could conceivably detect other forms of energy too. Anyway I needed it so I went with it.

      I'm slowly plonking along, playing to a very small audience but a very GOOD one, and I'm not ready to give up yet. I'm about three-quarters through the next chapter which, unfortunately for me, requires some fairly major neighborhood design changes. Like the house, it takes me a very long time to figure out what works and how to do it, if it can be done at all.

      Thank you again so much for reading and commenting. As you know, it helps keep me going.

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  4. Anonymous9/18/2019

    Abandoned or not, overgrown or not - that's such a pretty house. I can only imagine how majestic it must've looked back in its heyday! The events that came to pass in it, though... not pretty at all. Now there's one house where you really wouldn't want to be a fly on the wall. Or spider, in this case. So Fiona's secret superpower is ghost whisperer with a touch of spider mind-reader? The chapter back at the cemetery suddenly makes a lot more sense now! The ghosts from Gate Rock may not have been too talkative, but Lady the spider seems to have all the answers Fiona seeks. I have to admit, for a fleeting moment I just thought she was going to flick the spider off the wall or something... little did I know that spiders are friends and allies in the Dirac household! Sounds like Mrs.Dirac's kidnappers had a helluva hard time. Can't say that I pity them much, though.

    What I initially thought was just a drama piece about a girl with dead parents suddenly took a turn for the supernatural and I am SO here for it. I'm excited to see where you take this!

    - Esotheria

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    1. I am really looking forward to it myself. This is the first time I've looked at the supernatural, maybe because I didn't have a character or a place to go with it, but I hope I do now. If the sets didn't whip my ass so much I'd go faster.

      Fiona can see and communicate with ghosts, although she's at the mercy of those who want to communicate. She can definitely hear and talk to spiders, and those that live in that house will tell her what they know. Fiona's not going to get much more out of them than she already has unless it's accidental/coincidental though. As someone who lives comfortably with spiders, they can 'see' well enough to build a long strong web from one improbably distant plant to another so they're not blind, they just don't see the same way. They're probably not going to know if Gabe came to dinner often like she believes he did, or if his disappearance is connected to her parents'.

      Fiona's relationship with Jay is something else that's coming together. He has his own web of relationships too like the one with Hugs, and with Garrett, and with his mother, and with his cousin Autumn, all of whom have been or currently are or probably will be involved in this in one way or another. Autumn may get along with Fiona but Hugs may not.

      Thank you thank you! I hope I don't disappoint!

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  5. Once again, your pictures are breath-taking. I love the colors in these ones. The strong and flowering nature trying to reclaim the house stands in beautiful contrast to the empty and 'dead' interior.

    I really love what you did with the spiders: that's so creative! The tought that there are house spiders protecting the family brings to mind old folk tales from where I'm from (Sweden). Here, old tales of "hustomtar" remain from long ago (closest translation seems to be elves (I suppose house elves from Harry Potter isn't very far off, although they don't look at all like that).

    They were believed to be curious and spiteful little creatures that lived in your home. If you sacrificed to them and kept them happy, they would help you, tend to your animals/crops and protect your property. If you neglected to give them what they wanted, they would create varying degrees of havoc. They might tie the cows' tails together, destroy tools, or even beat you up.

    People, of course, don't believe in them anymore, but people often decorate their homes with little figurines of them, and it's not uncommon to hear someone claim that you should have at least one "hustomte" in your home, referring to the decorations.

    So I really enjoy what you did with the spiders, and with the Inside, the Outside and Upstairs. I wonder though if, similarly to the folk tale, the Dirac family need to sacrifice to them - and in that case, what it is. Seems like such loyalty would come with a price.

    The way you described what the spiders do is really nicely done: you once again succed at using very few, well chosen sentences to describe something with great detail. I especially liked the description on what the spiders would do when attacking an enemy.

    Great chapter! / Ani

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    1. Thank you again, Ani! When I first posted some shots from this, two years ago now, hard to believe, some people were frightened by the spider and I had to write a warning. I'm glad you're not.

      That's such an interesting comparison - spiders as an incarnation of not always helpful little elves or fairy type creatures that live or around a home. This one can speak and has a long relationship with the family, but the conversation between Fiona and 'the lady' is more professional than loving family member. I think of spiders that way. I protect and rescue them understanding that they're predators but predators who are not interested in eating me. They're interested in eating things I don't like. We have a close and satisfactory relationship although of course they're only dimly aware that I exist. A sacrifice of some sort considering those terms might be reasonable.

      I'm just enormously flattered you like the writing itself! I've always struggled with writing. It's easy to compare yourself to others and feel inadequate. Thank you so much!

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