“I want to help you.”
“I’m okay.”
“Is Meg there?”
“Why go on about her? Is it me you want to see?”
“Sure.”
“You’re alone?”
From his place by the window he could hear faint voices below and the sound of another vehicle. He had to hope the sounds weren’t carrying up to Sarah. “Yeah, I’m alone.” There was another pause before she said, “You still want me?”
“You bet”
“Love me, I mean?”
“I told you that before.”
She considered it for a while. “Want to make love?”
“Here?” He covered that quickly by adding, “Just give me the chance.” It was just too weird. He was interested only in finding the way up to where she was. “How do I get to you?”
“You see a beam jutting out to the center?”
“Christ, is it safe?”
“It’s the way I came. When you’re out far enough, you reach for the rope and climb up. You’re not scared?”
“I guess if you did it, I can. Only it’s getting dark in here.”
“That’s the exciting part.” She made it sound as if she had done this before, and he remembered that Rick Saville must have climbed the web in the gym in darkness.
Somewhere below, a car door closed.
“What was that?” Sarah asked.
“Some door. I guess the wind blew it shut. When I get to the top of the rope, where will you be?”
“Waiting here. And, Don...”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s keep it silent, huh. No talk. That’s how I want it.”
He didn’t ask why. “Okay.”
He felt the joist with his hands and put some weight on it. He sat astride it and began edging out from the ledge. The rope was some nine feet ahead, but the joist projected only about seven feet. It was too dark now to see the rubble he would hit seventy feet below if the joist collapsed.
He had moved as far out as he dared. With his arm and hand fully stretched he groped ahead for the rope and felt nothing.
Above him there was a small sound, and he heard breathing. Something touched him. He realized that she had climbed along the beam and started the rope swinging to bring it within his reach. As it came back to him for the second time, he caught it and got a grip on it. He reached as high as he was able, held on, brought his left foot up and rested it on the joist. He hauled himself into a standing position, reached higher up the rope, and swung clear.
Suspended there in almost total darkness, he thought, Why am I doing this? I am doing it for Sarah. Meg isn’t up here.
He took a grip on the rope with his feet and pulled himself higher. Only a few feet more.
Suddenly the place lit up. The police had him in their searchlight and he saw his shadow, squat and menacing on the rafters above. A few feet above him he saw Sarah’s face contorted with fury. She screamed, and it was a long, guttural scream, like no human sound.
“Sarah,” he shouted. “It’s okay! It’s okay!”
But there was a flash of metal in the light and he saw she had a cleaver in her hand and she was hacking at the rope, hitting it with frenzied blows.
“For God’s sake, Sarah!”
She was making no impression on the rope, so she reached farther down and took a wild swing at Don. The force of it tipped her off balance. Screaming, she plunged downward, so close to him that he felt the touch of her hair on his face.
The scream was stopped by a sickening thud.
Below, people were running toward the small, crumpled body.
Don’s limbs began to shake. With an effort he hauled himself up to the beam from which Sarah had fallen, and rested there.
In a moment someone addressed him through a bullhorn. “You okay, Mr. Rigden? We found Miss Kellaway in the cellar. She’s in bad shape, but she’ll live.”
“How about—?”
“This one? Didn’t stand a chance.”
“It was like this,” said Havelock Sloane. “I knew as soon as I heard she was dead that my documentary was dead, too. I’m not complaining. That’s how it is in this business. I was sad about all that beautiful film we shot, that’s all. I talked it over with Greg and he agreed it would be in bad taste to run the program, but while we were talking, I had this great idea. Shall I tell them, Greg?”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s a straight documentary of her life. It’ll be unique — a study of the growth of a psychosis. You see, we got most of it on film. There’s Ed’s first interview with her when she talks about her fear of spiders as a kid. We can flesh that out by talking to her folks in Cherry Hill. There’s that terrific action sequence with the spiders in the lab. Then the video recording of the Today show interview. And when you see that a second time, friends, I promise you you’ll see the signs of what’s to come — wouldn’t you say, Ed?”
“It’s there, certainly,” Ed Cunningham confirmed.
“And that leaves all the footage I shot. How Spider Girl really took over when Sarah got on that web. Fascinating television. Which doesn’t leave much for us to dramatize. We’ll get an actress to stand in for the Kellaway girl in the cellar sequence. I heard she is going to be under sedation for some time, so we can’t use her, even if we wanted to. But — you guessed it, Don — we’d like you to re-create the scene in the burned-out building. We don’t need to show Sarah at all. Just a hand wielding a cleaver as you climb the rope, and then we drop a dummy from the roof and finish on one of the stills the police photographers took. Will you do it?”
Somehow Don kept his anger in check. “Sure,” he said flatly. “I’ll do it, with just a few conditions. I want the rest of the film shot and edited before I do any filming at all. And I want it to feature a few people you haven’t mentioned who contributed in a major way. Okay, you’re including her parents. Let’s add Professor Jerry Berlin here, who made it all possible in the name of his department; Greg Laz, who first persuaded Sarah that she was star potential; Ed Cunningham, the kindly shrink so fascinated by her mind that he broke her heart. And you, Mr. Sloane, the guy who makes the big decisions, like putting that confused girl on a web and telling her to become a spider. When you’re all on tape and I’ve seen it, I’ll re-create her last moments, just like you said. It’s another step forward in documentary TV. Might even win you that Emmy, Havelock.”