‘Honor! You’re having a nightmare. It’s OK, I’m—’
Danny’s breath catches in his throat. Scuttling all over his girlfriend’s body are dozens of tarantulas the size of his hand.
‘What’s going on?’ Jessie asks groggily from behind him. ‘Why’s Honor screaming? What’s happening?’
The others are awake too and shouting out in confusion. As Danny desperately swipes at his girlfriend’s body, knocking the spiders off her sleeping bag, he hears Milo crawling out of the shelter and fumbling in the dark.
‘What are you doing?’ Danny hisses.
‘Trying to find a torch.’
‘I think Jeffers took it.’
‘Oh for God’s—’
Adrenaline courses through Danny’s body as he continues to push, shove and flick spiders off his girlfriend as she thrashes about, still trapped in her nightmare. When they’re all gone he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close. Her eyelids flicker and she blinks up at him.
‘Danny, why are you looking at me like that? What’s happened? What’s going on?’
He shakes his head wordlessly.
‘Tell me!’
‘Dude,’ Milo says from the just outside the shelter. ‘You looked like you were beating her up.’
‘I… I…’ Danny shakes his head. ‘I was getting rid of…’ He pauses. If he tells Honor the truth she’ll refuse to sleep in the shelter again.
‘Tell me!’ She pulls herself out of his arms and sits up. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
He shakes his head, closes his eyes tightly, trying to block out the image of the fat hairy spiders with their bulbous bodies and their long, furry legs, scuttling and creeping and crawling all over her.
‘Danny, tell me or we’re over.’
‘Spiders,’ he breathes. ‘They were all over you and—’
The rest of his sentence is obliterated by her scream.
Chapter 13
JESSIE
Day four on the island
The next morning, watching carefully where we step, we search every inch of the shelter and the surrounding area.
‘Nothing here,’ Milo says decisively, standing straight and rubbing at his lower back. ‘Dan, you must have scared them away.’
Honor, standing about as far away from the shelter as she can without actually straddling the dead fire, is hugging herself tightly. She’s wearing one of Danny’s sweatshirts, the hood pulled up over her head and fastened tightly under her chin. None of us have slept. I’m not particularly afraid of spiders but I was out of the shelter like a shot when Danny said the word ‘tarantula’. Meg scrambled after me, swiftly followed by Honor, Danny and Milo. The fire and torches had gone out and we couldn’t see a thing. No matter how much Danny tried to reassure Honor that he’d got rid of all the spiders she refused to go back to bed. Milo offered to go and find Jeffers, to see if we could borrow one of his torches, then changed his mind when Meg reminded him that he wouldn’t be able to see if there were any snakes on the forest floor. We tried to sleep, curled up on the sand around the dead fire, but there was no way that was going to happen. We waited for the sunrise instead, leaning against each other, knees gathered up to our chests, no one saying a word.
Danny pauses as he rounds the shelter and stares down at the sand.
‘What is it?’ Milo asks. ‘What have you seen?’
Danny crouches down. ‘Were these always here? These boot prints?’
We all move closer. None of us are wearing boots. We’ve all been living in flip-flops since we arrived four days ago.
‘Were these here yesterday?’ Danny asks again, touching the sand. ‘Can anyone remember seeing them?’
A shiver runs through me. I was wrong about us all wearing flip-flops. There’s one of our group who turned up on the island wearing very different footwear.
Danny reads my mind. ‘Jeffers wears boots, doesn’t he?’
I exchange a wary look with Meg. I can tell by the look on her face that she’s thinking the same. There’s no way Jeffers would have crept up on us in the night to drop spiders all over Honor. Absolutely no way.
‘What are you saying, man?’ Milo asks.
Danny gets to his feet. ‘I’m not saying anything, but I think we need to talk to him, don’t you?’
I can’t let this happen. ‘Milo,’ I say. ‘Can I have a word?’ We move away from the others, trailing down the beach in our bare feet. When we’re far enough away that we won’t be overheard I gesture for him to sit down.
‘What’s up?’ He turns to look at me. His face is sleep-crumpled and there are dark circles under his eyes, but his lips curve upwards into the smallest of smiles.
‘Something’s missing from camp.’
‘Huh?’
‘There were two axes lying on the sand near the shelter last night. I remember thinking I should pick them up in case anyone stood on them but I… I got distracted.’
Milo shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t beat yourself up.’
‘You don’t get it. They’re not there anymore. They’ve been taken.’
He glances over towards the shelter where Meg and Honor are deep in conversation and Danny is sitting alone by the fire, staring into the ash. ‘Are you sure?’
‘One hundred per cent.’
His eyes widen. ‘Oh my God. You think whoever put the spiders on Honor also took the axes?’
‘Not necessarily, but if they were Jefferson’s boot prints and he took the axes, he might have seen someone else creeping around.’
Milo picks up a small stone and flings it towards the sea. It bounces over the surface three times then disappears. ‘We need to talk to him, as soon as possible.’
‘I know, but we can’t tell Danny about the axes. He’ll put two and two together and—’
‘All hell will break loose.’
It takes us a while to find Jefferson. We spot his camp first – a hammock, strung between two trees, a rolled sleeping bag sitting in it, his rucksack hung from a sturdy branch and a huge fire, with an axe lying on the ground beside it, an axe he must have taken from our camp – but it takes some searching to locate him. We’re guided by the sound of an axe thwacking against wood and eventually stumble on to him a good ten- or fifteen-minute walk into the jungle. He jumps as we approach, then looks back at the tree and takes another swing at the trunk.
Milo hobbles towards him. His ankle’s a lot better than it was yesterday but it’s still sore.
‘Hey, Jeffers… I don’t suppose you heard anyone creeping around the jungle last night? Or spotted someone walking along the beach?’
Jefferson lowers his axe. ‘A stranger, you mean?’
‘Yeah. Something weird happened in camp, the original camp, last night and we’re just… we’re trying to figure it out.’
‘Weird how?’
‘Jeffers,’ I say. ‘We know you came back to the camp last night and took the axes.’
The base of his throat colours and he swallows.
‘It’s cool,’ Milo says. ‘We don’t care but if you saw anyone then you really need to—’