Read Online Tabitha by Andrew Hall - Free Book Online

at her ripped t-shirt and the silver blood
that streamed from her side. She sat down on the kerb and lifted her t-shirt
up, only to see the wound healing up before her eyes. The spider’s venom was in
her veins though. She could feel it, like a deep scalding chill. It hadn’t
killed her the first time though; why should it kill her now? She waited a
minute on the kerb, and the cold rush faded from her veins. She stood up and
felt alright. No numb tingling; no thumping pain in her chest. She tucked the
silver-bloodied knife into her belt and ran down the street for her mum’s
house.
    Tabitha reached
the suburbs gasping for breath, far up the hill away from town. All the houses
were empty here too. Every street was lifeless. Nothing but the odd seagull
overhead. A garden gnome smiled from a shrubby garden outside a bungalow,
oblivious to the eerie silent world. Tabitha leapt the garden wall and looked
in the windows, but there was only gloom inside. It was the same in every house
she peered into. Pale sheets around her caught her eye though, tumbling on the
road or tangled up against hedges. They weren’t sheets though… they’d been
people. She didn’t look; she couldn’t. Every time she saw an empty skin she
crossed the street. She didn’t feel sadness, only shock. Her fear took
priority. Prey was selfish.
     
    ‘Hello? Mum?’
said Tabitha, closing her mum’s front door behind her. Right away, the murky
light in the house set her on edge. The curtains hadn’t been opened, and that
was very un-Mum.
    ‘Mum?’ she called
out. She walked slowly down the hallway, checked the kitchen and the living
room. There was a smell from the kitchen like sour milk, and the closed blinds
gave her childhood home a dim, languid light.
    ‘Mum,’ she
called up to the bedrooms, climbing the steep staircase. Her insides felt like
concrete. She touched an old photo of Dad, hanging on the wall at the top of
the stairs. He was smiling; he’d always been smiling. His grin was almost a
gurn. He was always scruffy and daft, wearing that dirty old jacket and
turned-up corduroys. Shirts he could never be bothered to iron. He’d always
dressed like an old man. Tabitha felt a pain push through her as she stroked
the photo, like a shard of glass in her heart. Not just for Dad, though. There
was already a fresh weight of dread creeping over her in the silence.
    ‘Tell me she’s
alright Dad,’ she whispered to the photo, voice trembling. ‘Don’t make me go
in. Don’t make me go in.’ Her dad’s picture just smiled though, gently
oblivious. Smiled to her from history. Tabitha knew what was coming. She felt
all her life and joy draining out, and only cold hard horror in its place. She
didn’t want to turn away from Dad’s picture.
    ‘Mum,’ she said
quietly, hoping against hope, looking at the bedroom door. There was a smell coming
through underneath it, and the sound of flies buzzing inside. Tabitha placed a
grey hand on the door and pushed gently, slowly. She didn’t want to see
everything. She only wanted to be sure. She peered through the gap in the door,
only inches wide. She saw a shoe on the lilac carpet. And Mum’s desk, a neat
clutter of perfume bottles and jewellery boxes. Only one of the five ever had
jewellery in it, Tabitha remembered. The rest of them were full of shells and
pebbles and dusty old feathers, and twigs and ‘artefacts’ from when all three
of them went on their walks. Mum had kept everything. Her fluffy old dressing
gown still warmed the chair it was draped on. Behind it was the little heart on
the mirror, drawn in red lipstick. Mum had told her off when she caught her
drawing it, until she saw it was a love heart with MUM written inside it. In
ten years, Mum had never wiped it off. Tabitha didn’t open the bedroom door any
wider. She couldn’t. Looking in the mirror, she didn’t need to. She glimpsed
the reflection and saw a lifeless shape on the bed, half-hidden in the dim
light of the drawn