"How dangerous?"
"The crawl space is…inhabited. You see, the Hall has to put its electrical cables and gas pipes and so on somewhere out of sight, but for security purposes they can’t just be hidden away inside the walls; they have to be protected. Against sabotage and the like. So all our crawl spaces and hidden maintenance areas are located in attached pocket dimensions. Like the Armageddon Codex and the Lion’s Jaws, but on a much smaller and less dramatic scale. And a lot easier for people to get into, obviously. Anyway, some of these pocket dimensions have been around so long they’ve acquired their own inhabitants. Things that wandered in and…mutated. Or evolved."
"What exactly inhabits this particular crawl space?" said Molly.
"Spiders," I said unhappily. "Big spiders. And I mean really big spiders; things the size of your head! Plus a whole bunch of other really nasty creepy-crawly things that the spiders feed on."
"Spiders don’t bother me," said Molly. "That’s more a boy thing. It’s slugs that weird me out. And snails. Do you know how snails have sex?"
"These spiders will bother you," I said firmly, refusing to be sidetracked. "Hopefully they’re not actually as big and nasty as my childhood memories insist, because there’s no way of avoiding them. Their webs are everywhere. I still have nightmares, sometimes, about all the times they chased me through the crawl space…with their scuttling legs and glowing eyes…"
"Then why did you keep using that particular shortcut?" said Molly.
"Because I’ve never let anything stop me from doing what I need to do," I said. "Not even my own fear. Perhaps especially not that."
"And there’s no other way of getting to the library?"
"Not safely."
Molly sniffed. "You have a really weird idea of what’s safe and what’s not, Drood."
I led her down a shadowy side corridor, past a long row of tall standing vases from the third Ming dynasty and then past a glass display case full of exquisite Venetian glass, until I came to a wood-panelled wall that stretched away into the distance. I had to keep pulling Molly along, as she got distracted by so much wealth within easy snatching distance. I counted off the panels until I came to a particular carved wooden rose motif, and then I turned it carefully left and right the correct number of times until the primitive combination lock reluctantly fell into place. The rose clicked loudly, and a panel in the wall slid jerkily open. The ancient mechanism must be wearing out. Beyond the panel and inside the wall, there was only darkness.
The opening that had been more than ample for a child was only just big enough to let Molly and me squeeze through. We crouched down before the opening and peered into the darkness. A slow cold breeze came out of the dark, carrying a dry, dusty smell. Molly wrinkled her nose but said nothing. Thick strands of cobweb hung down inside the opening, swaying heavily on the breeze. There was no sign that anybody had been in the crawl space in years. I listened quietly, gesturing sharply for Molly to keep still when she fidgeted. I couldn’t hear anything. For the moment. I took a deep breath, braced myself, and then squeezed quickly through the cramped opening before I could change my mind. Molly followed me in, crowding right behind me, and the wooden panel slid jerkily back into place.
The darkness was absolute. Molly quickly conjured up a handful of her trademark witchfire, and the shimmering silver light showed us a narrow stone tunnel, the rough gray walls all but buried under accumulated layers of colour-coded wiring, cables, and copper and brass tubing. Thick mats of webbing crawled across the surface of both walls. I grimaced despite myself, even though I was careful not to touch or disturb any of it. Molly’s witchlight showed the tunnel stretching away before us, but if there was a ceiling, the light couldn’t reach high enough to find it. A thick streamer of webbing blew away from one wall, carried on the gusting breeze, and I flinched away from it.
"You big baby," said Molly, grinning broadly.
"Isn’t that a slug by your foot?" I said, and grinned as Molly made a loud eeking noise.
I led the way down the tunnel. Pride would allow no less. The floor was thick with undisturbed dust. Even the smallest sounds we made seemed to echo on forever; the only sounds in that endless eerie silence. The tunnel steadily widened until it seemed the size of a room, and then a hall, and then abruptly it widened out still farther until I could no longer tell how big a space we were moving in. I stuck close to the right-hand wall, its familiar man-made cables and piping a comfort to me. Until they became so thickly buried under webbing I could no longer see them clearly.
Molly boosted her witchlight as much as possible, but the light didn’t travel far. Beyond a certain point, the darkness just seemed to soak it up. There was a feeling of spae…stretching away, endlessly. We walked and walked, and the journey was just as bad as I remembered. Perhaps more so; I kept coming across suddenly familiar details that I hadn’t let myself remember. Like the hollow husks of really big insects and beetles scattered across the floor, their insides chewed out. And the thick strands of webbing that hung down from somewhere high above us, twitching and twisting even though the breeze was no longer blowing. I was amazed I’d found the courage to come this way back when I was just a kid. But thinking of the Sarjeant-at-Arms’s punishments had made it easy. I was far more scared of him than I ever was of giant spiders. Even though I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have actually killed me.
There were noises out in the dark. Scuttling, scurrying noises. Molly and I stopped short and looked around us. Molly held her handful of light up high, but it didn’t help. Soft wet sounds came from behind and up ahead, along with slow scraping sounds, like claws on stone.
"Okay," said Molly. "This is seriously creeping me out."
"Are you sure you can’t make any more light?" I said. "I don’t think they like the light."
"I’m giving it all I’ve got," snapped Molly, sounding just a bit strained.
"Something in this pocket dimension of yours doesn’t like light. It’s all I can do to maintain what I’ve got. How much farther to the library?"
"Still some way yet," I said. "If I’m remembering correctly. Follow me, hurry as much as you can, but don’t run. They chase anything that runs. I found that out the hard way."
We moved on, striding quickly through the dark. The webbing hanging down from above was getting thicker, heavier, like hanging curtains of dirty gauze. I ducked around them, careful not to let any of them touch me. They were all stirring restlessly now, twitching as though disturbed from a long sleep. And always there were the noises out in the dark, slowly but steadily closing in on us. Molly and I moved as quickly as we could without actually running. We were both breathing hard.
We almost ran straight into the massive web that blocked our way, its silver gray threads only showing up in the witchlight at the very last moment. It hung unsupported on the air before us, huge and intricate, radiating away beyond the limits of the witchlight. It would take a spider the size of a bus to spin a web that size. Or an awful lot of smaller spiders working together. I wasn’t sure which thought was the most disturbing. It very definitely hadn’t been here the last time I came this way.
"That…is a big web," said Molly. "Still, I’ve got some shears and you’ve got a bloody big stick. Do we smash our way through?"
"Can’t help feeling that’s a bad idea," I said. "But we don’t have any choice. We have to go on…"
"Look," said Molly. "If you’re really that worried, armour up."
"I can’t," I said. "The rules of reality work differently here. The armour won’t come. I found that out the hard way too."
"Now he tells me," said Molly. "Okay, it’s time to squeeze one out or get off the pot. We can’t go back, so…burn, baby, burn!"