The room disappeared – the stacks and sprawling piles of paper, the battered old stove, the dusty couch – and was replaced by darkness and a sensation of dread. She couldn’t move, and she didn’t know whether she was bound with ropes or by fear. She was blind and helpless, and there was a wild, pungent scent in the air – musk and fur; something feral and unpleasant. Like an animal.
But worst of all was the feeling that came over her. A sense of being held against her will. Of helplessness, and impotent anger. And beneath that, vast and dark, like a gigantic rising shadow under the waves, a sense of great evil.
It was so strong, so fundamentally wrong, that it made her retch. The world slammed back, like a blow to the face, and she gasped for breath, the pendant dropping from her suddenly nerveless fingers and falling into a pile of papers.
She stared down at it, her heart banging in her chest, trying to slow her breathing from panicky gasps to something more measured. Had the pendant given her a…a vision? Or was this another delusion? Was she losing her grip on reality?
She hesitated, then she reached down for the golden angel, wrapping the chain around her fingers, careful not to touch the pendant itself. Okay, so probably she was going crazy, but she didn’t intend to take any chances. The vision, or delusion, or whatever it had been, had rocked her.
As she picked up the pendant, a spider ran over the back of her hand, all skittering multi-jointed legs and jerky stop-motion movement. She shrieked and jerked back, dislodging the spider, but now there were more. Another six, another dozen, running over the pile of papers and scattering across the room, fast and erratic on their eight spindly legs.
Ivy turned, then stopped in her tracks, frozen to the spot. The stacks of paper around the room were swarming with fat spiders, their bodies like glistening blood blisters, their legs spiky and horribly quick. There were hundreds of them. Thousands.
And where their legs brushed the paper, it started to smoulder. As the spiders scurried over the stacks, sparks and tiny flames started up, spreading quickly until ribbons of fire crackled across the stacks.
Ivy whirled around, panicked. Hadn’t she thought earlier that the place would go up like dry tinder if she dropped a match? Had that been another premonition? But how were the spiders spreading the fire?
She shook her head to clear it. She was hallucinating. She had to be. What was happening made no sense. But the choking, acrid scent of smoke was all too real, and something inside her – some deep instinct – told her that she couldn’t afford to believe it was all in her head.
Now the flames were roaring up the stacks. Thick, black smoke plumed towards the ceiling. One of the towering piles toppled and smashed against the floor in a shower of ash that scattered across the floorboards, its smouldering edges catching the bundles of clothes and the fringes of a filthy old rag rug.
She turned for the stairs, but flames blocked the doorway, crackling red and orange, shot through with black. The heat was building, pressing in on her, and she tried to draw in a breath, choking on the smoke and the scalding air.
She screamed for help – but only inside her head.
