It's telling that in the moments following Raven's outburst—when my thoughts might've lifted into hope—they instead disenthralled me of such fatuous optimism, leaving me anxious for the inevitable hand of Fate. Breathing raggedly at my desk, I listened to Raven's deathly screeching finally fade away—only to be replaced by another voice, one which I'd been hearing throughout this terrible ordeal yet only now came to the foreground.
"This Prosecutor is useless!" it yelled.
"And who are you?" asked the Judge.
One masked figure rose stiffly from the gallery. He was childishly short and there was something about his bearing; the queer angle of his pudgy knees, the hitch of his charcoal shorts, the untucked shirt and striped tie—
"Pronin!?" I blurted, watching him pull off his mask. "What the hell are you doing here?" He hadn't aged at all; his pasty skin glistening like spoiled milk, and indeed so had his grudge against me likewise putrified. He informed the Judge of our history and demanded to bear witness.
"Not on your life." I told him. He had no standing in the court, and neither the Defence nor I had summoned him for testimony. That Ivan Pronin had the gall to raise his head was wholly appalling. But the Judge flared at my initiative.
"I daresay this is my Courtroom, Mr Blaze, and will thank you to remember it." He beckoned Pronin to the witness stand, cautioning me further that "—this had better not be an oversight on your part, Mr Prosecutor, for this man is clearly in mind to condemn your character."
Pronin was sworn in and wasted no time in spewing an acrid portrayal of my youth. "He was weird," said Pronin. "Always kept to himself and his books. Wouldn't even look you in the eye. He called the rest of us jabberwockies and told the teacher we had scabies so we'd get kept inside. He hated the sun."
I sat there open-mouthed. Frustrated as I was that the Professor was not objecting, I was equally fascinated by the narrative and how convincingly Pronin was lying. Did he honestly believe such things? Or had his mind been so consumed with hate that it had twisted his memories to suit these maleficent delusions? Pronin went on to detail our playground altercation and his father's subsequent dismissal from the steel factory where he worked. "I had to help clean guts at the fishmonger," he said.
"No you didn't," I objected. "You went to New Zealand."
"It was Wellington's Fishmonger!" he shouted back. "And you used to walk by every day!"
The Judge ordered him to calm down but what did it matter now that Pronin's words had infected the Court's ears? Even I found the image he'd painted compelling. I shot a scathing look to the Professor only to find him consulting his little mirror again.
"What are you even doing?" I hissed.
He smiled. "Making you look good, counsellor. Carry on."
"You carry on. You're my defence."
"And this is all hearsay," he said. "You needn't worry." He preened his lapel with unreserved confidence and before I could berate him further, the Judge had dismissed Pronin from the stand.
"But what about my cross-examination?" I insisted.
"I rather think the point's already in your favour, Mr Prosecutor," said the Judge. He chuckled at that, and it was all I could do to restrain myself from striking Pronin when he came passed me and whispered: "Still think you're better than everyone, Blaze?"
"You're damn right I do!" I said, losing all control as I spun around with full intention to crack him on his head. But Pronin was gone and creeping down the aisle was a giant black spider.
*
There was a large commotion and much screaming in the Gallery. Trapped between their narrow pews, the hundred masked-people fought desperately to escape, only to stymie one another into a congealed mass. Still I envied them, for at least their bodies sought safety whereas my own stood rooted to the spot—petrified—as I watched the giant spider's hairy undercarriage move slowly over my head.
"Steady now," called the Judge, banging his stethoscope in odd clusters until the giant spider had positioned itself above the witness box. "The next witness has agreed to testify on condition they are duly protected. Is that clear, counsellors?"
The Professor nodded easily, the only person not to have shown the slightest trace of fear, choosing to watch the spider approach from its reflection in his little mirror. I, however, needed to be asked twice more before my mouth would utter a sound. "Y—yes."
"Very well," said the Judge. "The witness is so assured."
At this, the giant spider collected its eight legs such that they formed a kind of prison-bar cage around the witness stand. Then, from somewhere on its belly, a masked figure descended on a thick gossamer thread.
The White Ram blew his horn. "Vanessa Dukes is called."
Beautiful as ever, she wore her floral jumper and matching Alice band from which her long auburn hair floated about her head like seaweed suspended in still water. My heart thundering, I ran to her. "Vanessa? Is that really you?"
"You stay back," she yelled, and the dreadful look in her eyes arrested me like a Gorgon's stare.
"What's wrong?" I said. "Please, Vanessa, don't you see? It's me, Isaac."
"I said stay away."
The Judge ordered me to remain behind my desk, and the Professor was told to proceeded with his case. After establishing Vanessa's relationship to me, he moved quickly to disqualify her from testimony on the grounds of relevance.
"You knew Mr Blaze only as a child," said the Professor. "What possible bearing does that have on the present allegation of murder?"
"Because he wasn't an ordinary child," she said. "The way he would sit and watch me—he had a killer's eyes."
The Professor objected. "I'm sorry, Ms Dukes, but you cannot know what any person is thinking, much less prosecute them for it."
"But they weren't just thoughts," said Vanessa, insisting that she had actually witnessed me kill things for the pure pleasure of it. "He used to trap spiders and pull off their legs. He said that if you rearrange the letters in spider you get Sr. Pied, but if Sr. Pied lost all his feet…"
"…then what would he be called?" I heard myself whisper along before a violent headache suddenly tore my vision in two, four, eight—I had to squeeze my hands against my temples to keep from bursting. "What is this!" I shouted. "Why the hell are you saying these things?"
"That's enough, Counsellor," called the Judge, ordering me to remain silent as Vanessa continued to slander my repute. She told the court about the spider which had interrupted our reading of Don Quixote. "I tired to show him the creature was harmless, that it only wanted to listen to the story too. But I found it the next day, squished between the pages with its legs pulled off. "
"That can't be true!" I objected but something struck my chest and pinned me on top of my desk. I grabbed hold of it only to recoil in horror—for I saw it was one foot of the giant spider. "Get it off me," I demanded. "Let me go."
The Judge declined. "You were warned to stay still, Counsellor."
Paralysed, I lay helpless as Vanessa told the Court unspeakable things—lies all of them—until eventually the Professor had run out of angles from which to seek a defence. "Your testimony is harrowing," he admitted. "But whatever vendetta Mr Blaze harboured against the arachnid species, I maintain he is no longer that same cruel child, nor Doctor Wheeler of the eight-legged persuasion."
"Then you are misinformed!" came a shout from the Gallery and I craned my neck to find speaking the spider from my prison cell. It hung above the crowd and absurdly it too had a tiny mask on its head. "Mr Blaze attacked me only a few days ago," it said. "He hasn't changed at all."
The statement caused quite the stir but before the Judge could reprimand the outburst, the spider had zipped back up its web, and for the first time I lifted my eyes into the gloom of the vaulted ceiling: whereupon a thousand red spider eyes slowly opened.
There are no words for the kind of fear that wholly consumed me at that moment. Trapped beneath the giant spider's leg, I tried in vain to stab at it with my stupid crayon, but it simply pressed down harder, pushing the air from my lungs. Unable to move, I felt an overwhelming desire to give in and die.
"As if we'd let you off that easy," said the Judge. "Regrettably, counsellor, you have work to do." He beckoned me to begin my prosecution (for the Professor had desisted from Vanessa in favour of gazing curiously at the ceiling of spiders) but I had nothing to offer the Court except my pathetic tears.
"Why would you say these things?" I whimpered, begging Vanessa to recant her testimony but the Judge cut me off with a bang of his stethoscope. "Prosecutorial misconduct! The witness will be removed at once."
"No!" I cried—but it was too late. Vanessa vanished back into the spider's belly, taking with her the last warm images of my childhood, forever replaced by the grotesque insect which now crept up the walls and anchored itself above the court like a nightmare chandelier.