Songs From Spider Street by Mark Howard Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

eventually found Framehr in the basement, hunting for a box of
old papers.
    When he saw
Paterson carrying something wrapped in a sheet, he stopped what he was doing
and walked over to him. “What …?” He reached forward and uncovered Eve’s face.
    “She was …
mechanical,” was all Paterson could think to say.
    Framehr let
out a wail and tried to strike Paterson. “You killed her! You killed her, you
bastard! Give her to me, give her to me, give her back!” Paterson extended his
arms so that Framehr could lift the figure from him.
    Idiotically
he repeated: “She was mechanical.”
    Framehr’s
eyes blazed at him. “I know what she was. She was my daughter. Julia and
I couldn’t … It took Van Epps years … years …” He sobbed, holding the machine’s
hair to his face for a moment before laying the body gently on the floor.
    “I came
looking for her,” confessed Paterson. “Even though I didn’t know it.”
    This seemed
to make sense to Framehr. He gave a short, bitter laugh. “So you knew. Well,
you’re not the first to come looking for Van Epps’ secret masterpiece! What did
they offer you for finding it, eh? What will they give you, now that you’ve
destroyed it?”
    Paterson
shook his head. He stared at the floor. “You hated it here, didn’t you? You
were both trapped here.”
    Framehr’s
face turned red as he became even angrier. “Yes. But if you’d done what you
said you would, you fraud, I could have sold this place and lived out a proper
life elsewhere! I shouldn’t have trusted you so easily. You haven’t done a
single thing since you’ve been here, have you?”
    “But what
about her? Could she have lived anywhere else?” Paterson asked, nodding vaguely
in the direction of Eve’s remains.
    The old man’s
face dropped. He half-turned away, as if he’d suddenly remembered an unfinished
task, before looking back at Paterson and nodding once.
    Framehr
staggered back a few paces. He bent and scooped the thing he’d called his
daughter from the floor. A look of immeasurable sadness crossed his face as he
moved towards the opening to the machine pit.
    Despite his
age, he hopped quickly onto the ladder, cradling the disintegrating form of Eve
in his arms. Paterson heard small metal parts dropping into the pit, clattering
on the floor. Framehr looked back at him, an expression of awful loneliness on
his face.
    “What? What
are …?” Then Paterson realised and dashed forward. He stretched his arms
through the opening, trying to grab Framehr. But the old man had already
jumped, his mechanical daughter clutched to him, plunging down into the
darkness and rust and relentless motion of the dark pit. Paterson heard
something hit the huge wheels and cogs, then came a strangled scream and the
sound of gears straining against something less yielding than flesh and bone.
    He tried to
peer down into the pit but a cloud of rust and darkness rose to meet him.
Shielding his eyes, he turned away as the floor began to shake and rivets
complained and then popped. Ripping through the threadbare carpets, the giant
metal plates of the floor began to tilt and crumple as the machinery of the
house tore itself apart. Paterson ran for the stairs.
    Once
upstairs, he ran through the lurching structure and almost leapt out of the
front door. He threw himself on the sparse grass and hid his face from the
cloud of dust and debris rolling out from the grinding, groaning despair of the
house.
    After ten
minutes, the noise subsided and Paterson dared to raise his head. He felt sick
as he saw that Van Epps’ masterpiece was now a tumbled and tangled heap of
metal, rust, sticks of wood and God alone knew what else. He stood and walked
over to it. The house seemed to have toppled over backwards, away from where he
had lain, revealing the machine pit and another room hidden beneath the
structure.
    He knelt,
fascinated, and peered in. He hadn’t discovered this other, hidden room during
his examination of the house.