by Sam Witt
He wrenched open the shed’s door and spied the red gas can sitting on a shelf right where he’d left it. Jimmy grabbed it then headed for his ancient Datsun pickup to grab a lighter off the dash. Jimmy paused at the sight of a dented pack of Marlboros on the dash. He put the gas can down next to the truck and grabbed the lighter and cigarettes.
Might as well have a smoke, he thought. He’d look like a total badass when he set the trailer off by tossing his cigarette over his shoulder as he walked away. Yeah, that was going to be something.
Jimmy pulled the first drag deep into his lungs, enjoying the hot scrape of nicotine clawing its way into his system. His hands stopped shaking after the second inhalation, and he felt almost human by the third drag. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
With a cigarette clamped between his lips, Jimmy scooped the gas can off the gravel. It was almost full, a gallon of amber fire just waiting for him to light the torch. He didn’t dare go back into the trailer, but he could pour gasoline all around its base. One quick trip around the trailer, and he’d be ready to burn the fucker down.
But he never got the chance.
As he passed under a big old oak, a sudden chill washed over Jimmy. He looked up, and a nightmare shadow fell toward him. The stunning impact slammed Jimmy to the ground and drove the air out of his lungs with a pained whoosh. His cigarette tumbled out of his grip, and its cherry-red spark disappeared into the night.
The monster stood and dragged Jimmy up with it. Eight bulging black eyes dominated the upper half of the creature’s face in a haphazard arrangement of glistening orbs that covered its flesh from the bridge of its nose to the top of its forehead.
Its nose was broad and flat, the nostrils visible beneath the upturned tip. Coarse hairs, black and wiry, erupted from those nostrils like a thicket of weeds.
The mouth spread wide, literally from ear to ear, with a single pair of tusk-like fangs curling down and out of the gaping slash. Behind those, Jimmy saw row after row of black stumps, their surfaces slick with saliva that shone silver under the moon’s light. Segmented appendages spread from around the mouth, expanding and contracting in a hypnotic pattern.
Jimmy swayed in the monster’s hands. It held him tight against its pendulous gut that hung swollen and red between its legs.
“You have betrayed the mistress,” the creature whispered to Jimmy. There was an undercurrent of raw pain as it spoke, as if forcing human words through its alien mouth was pure torture.
Jimmy couldn’t make any sense of what it said. Mistress? “Please,” he begged, “I don’t know what I did. You gotta believe me.”
In response, the creature spun and slammed Jimmy against the tree. It leaned in so close, its mouth legs brushed the side of Jimmy’s face. Its breath smelled like overripened fruit; it reminded Jimmy of the home brew peach brandy his uncle used to make. “For generations you people have taken without obeying the laws. You have forgotten to honor her,” the creature whispered, its inflection strange and halting. “And now the mistress will take it all back.”
The spider-beast flung Jimmy to the ground. He landed hard on his belly. His hands curled over the back of his neck to protect him from the attack he knew was coming. But the creature didn’t go for his neck. It stepped forward and kicked Jimmy in the ribs hard enough to flip him onto his back.
Stars danced across Jimmy’s vision, and his ribs felt as if every one of them had been pulled loose then rammed back in upside down. He couldn’t catch his breath; he couldn’t see. But he could feel.
The monster lifted Jimmy’s feet from the earth and held him close to its distended belly. Blunt appendages unfurled from its gut, revealing twin sphincters that spat thick cords of webbing. The stunted, paddle-like limbs on its abdomen grasped the cords and looped them around Jimmy’s feet, then his ankles. The spider-beast tilted its stomach up as it wrapped Jimmy in layer after layer of silk.
As the webs covered his calves, Jimmy’s pulse pounded in his ears. The threads ground his bones together and tore his flesh. By the time the threads reached his knees, the pressure had snapped the bones in his lower legs with a string of wet cracks. Their shattered ends pushed through his flesh, and his blood stained the webs red.
Jimmy screamed until he choked on vomit. The webbing moved up past his knees and twisted the joints inward. The pressure separated his ligaments and ripped tendons loose from their moorings. His knees gave way with a muffled crunch.
Agony pushed Jimmy down into the murky depths of unconsciousness. There was pain, but it belonged to someone else. All he could register was an inexorable pressure building around him.
The spider-beast continued its work. It wove the webs with the speed and skill born of generations of diligent practice. Its crimson stomach twitched and pulsed as it extruded layer after layer of sleek thread. It crooned to its victim, singing a song in the language that had died long before men walked these lands. It performed the holy sacrament, revoking the blessing its mistress had granted to the people of Pitchfork in days long past.
A liquid warmth grew in its belly as the cords crushed the man’s pelvis and spun up around his abdomen. It slowed its work, careful to savor every second of its duty. By the time it reached the man’s ribs, his cheeks were bulging.
It reached down to pry the man’s lips apart. It did not want the precious offering to be damaged by his teeth. It could see the glistening red mass at the back of the man’s throat, and watched as it pushed into his mouth.
It pulled the webs tighter and tighter as they covered more and more of the man’s body.
Blood bubbled from the man’s nostrils, and the spider-beast knew it was time. It pulled the man’s jaw down, and the sacrifice emerged into the moonlight.
A red mass of organs oozed from the Jimmy’s mouth, pushed forth by the spider-beast’s crushing web.
The monstrosity let the last of the web slither free of its belly then crouched next to Jimmy’s body. Its mouth gaped, the lower jaw flopping down onto its chest as its head tilted back to the sky. It lunged forward, and its pedipalps seized the mass of organs and shoveled them down its gullet.
Bloated with its meal, the spider-beast lolled against the tree. It gave itself a few moments to bask in the warm glow of its prey’s death before it continued the ritual. It retrieved the precious idol from where it had hidden it at the base of the tree. It raised the idol to the moonlight, admiring its smooth surface. It was a perfect, tapering cone inscribed with symbols men had long ago forgotten, but would soon remember. The creature whispered the words of its goddess, the words that repudiated the foolish men who had failed in their holy duty.
It rammed the idol into the man’s mouth, shoving it deep into the hollowed core of its body. “You have failed to honor your part of the covenant.” It spat the words into the dead man’s face. “The goddess will reclaim all she has given you, and there will be nothing left to mark your passing but your desiccated husks.”
The spider-beast dragged the silk-shrouded corpse into the tree and dangled it from an outstretched bough with a thick cord of silk. Then it vanished into the night, warmed by the knowledge that, at long last, the goddess was waking, and it need hide no longer.
3
Joe eyeballed the corpse hanging from the tree. It was too early in the morning and far too cold for him to be dealing with the dead. “Are you kidding me, Mildred?”
The old witch shrugged, and her back crackled from the effort. She still hadn’t quite recovered from the Conclave’s last tussle a few months back. “Figured somebody oughta look at it. Might as well be you.”
Joe pulled his Stetson down lower over his eyes to shield them from the irritating rays of the early morning sun. The cold light reminded him of too many nights spent chasing his demons to the bottom of a bottle, too many mornings watching the sun come up through an alcoholic haze. Though his drinking days were behind him, Joe didn’t think he’d ever forget the toll they’d taken on his body and his spirit. “I’m not a fuck
ing exterminator.”
Mildred cackled and slapped her knees with her bony hands. “Ya think it was just an extra big spider what did this?”
Joe pointed a finger at the silk-wrapped body. “That’s what it looks like to me. I mean, it had to have been a really, really big spider, but still just a spider. No need to get the Night Marshal involved.”
Joe hadn’t got a call from the Long Man to poke his nose into this messy business. As far as he was concerned, that meant there was no Left-Hand Path foolishness here. And that meant he could go back home and curl up under the sheets with his wife. It was too cold to be out here tramping around in the snow to look at a gargantuan spider’s final meal.
Mildred squinted at Joe and fixed him with her rheumy glare. “Yer gettin’ soft. This weren’t no spider.”
Joe shoved his hands in his front pockets. Guilt nibbled at the edges of his nerves. “What is it you want me to do here? I didn’t get a call from the Black Lodge. I’ve got no business here.”
Mildred clucked her tongue at him. “That’s what I’m talking about. That old devil up there, he ain’t yer boss. He supposed to help ya do yer job, not tell ya what that job is.”
She had a point, but Joe didn’t know if she was right anymore. His relationship with the Long Man had got tangled over the past few months, starting with Joe’s threat to strangle the old man. Joe didn’t know if the Long Man would ever call him again. More importantly, Joe wasn’t sure he even cared. The last time the supernatural had reared its ugly head, Joe had ended up on the auction block, being sold off to the highest bidding monster. Since then, he’d kept his family close and let the rest of Pitchfork County take care of itself. The Long Man didn’t seem to want Joe around, and that was just fine with Joe. “You still haven’t convinced me this is my job.”
Mildred grumbled at Joe and tapped a cracked fingernail against the side of her temple. “Yer not even looking. Open them big ol’ peepers.”
Joe knew she was right. He also knew Mildred had done a lot for his wife and the rest of Pitchfork over the years. He owed her at least a good look around at the place. And that included looking at it with his other eyes. He let his eyelids drift closed then wrestled a sliver of power away from the pieces of the Long Man and the Haunter in Darkness still lodged inside his skull.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that Mildred was right. The cocooned body was filthy with Left-Hand Path bullshit. Eldritch shadows suffused every silken thread and drifted from the dead man’s open mouth like wisps of fog from a frozen pond. He blew out his lips in an exasperated sigh and wished for a cigarette and a belt of whiskey. “Goddammit,” he said. “Anybody else know about this shit yet?”
Mildred cackled again. “Naw, I figured I’d keep this just ’tween us.”
Joe grumbled under his breath and took a better look around with his supernaturally enhanced vision. Now that he’d seen the darkness, he couldn’t ignore it. It wasn’t just the body that was swarming with dark magic; there was a trail of the stuff, thick and sticky, that led back to the rusted-out trailer. “You take a look in there yet?” Joe asked, tipping his head toward the trailer’s open door.
Mildred shook her head. Joe didn’t blame her because some of the worst nightmares he’d ever seen were hidden in shitty little trailers.
Though the morning sun was making a valiant effort to shed more light into the shallow valley, its early spring rays were still too weak to drive the shadows out of the trailer. If Joe wanted to look around in there, he was going to need some more light, and he hadn’t brought a flashlight. That was excuse enough to stay outside, even if that meant taking a closer and more personal look at the dead man hanging from the oak tree.
The corpse’s head was waist high, forcing Joe to kneel down to get a better look. He couldn’t make out many details below the thick sheath of silk, but he could tell the corpse was too small for the average man. There was something missing.
The man’s head, on the other hand, was swollen, and his face was flushed a deep crimson. Burst blood vessels crisscrossed the man’s cheeks like scarlet lightning bolts. His forehead was a crowning lump of bruised flesh. His eyes were puffy black, the lids sealed with blood.
Just below the man’s neck, the webs had bitten deep into the dead man’s flesh. The thread-thin strands had been drawn incredibly tight, crushing the man as they were woven around him. Joe had a sneaking suspicion the extreme constriction had done a number on the man’s insides, as well.
He unpinned his badge from his chest and fed a little of the stolen power into it. It was harder to pull on the strength this time, and Joe could feel his efforts rousing the monsters that lived in the back of his head. Their anger kicked up a headache at the base of his brain that he knew would soon overwhelm him. He needed to get this over with quickly and get back home where he could hunker down before the pain he knew was coming knocked him on his ass.
A flat white light flickered across the badge’s surface, drawing a warm glow from the silver. Joe held the badge in front of the corpse’s open mouth and took a look inside. He angled the badge’s light so it shone up into the man’s throat, and let out a low whistle. “Somebody was really, really pissed at this guy.”
He pushed his fingers past the man’s nicotine-stained teeth and stretched them up into his throat. There was something hard and smooth there. Joe worked his digits around to get a grip on it. It felt like a piece of stone, old and worn smooth by time yet hard and unyielding. He didn’t want to see it. But he didn’t have a choice now that he’d started digging around.
Joe gave the thing a tug, and it slid free as smoothly as a knife from a butter crock. It felt too warm in his hand, almost alive. He wanted to toss it away but forced himself to take a look at it.
It was eight inches long and fashioned from a milky, translucent stone. It was wide at the end he held but tapered to a blunt point at the opposite end. The surface was sticky with clotting blood, most of which had settled into the carvings on its surface. Someone had hacked a large rune into the stone, but Joe didn’t recognize it. He held it out for Mildred and asked, “You ever seen anything like this?”
“Can’t say as I have,” she said, peering at the weird object. “But something ain’t right with that thing.”
“That’s a brilliant insight there, witch.” Joe held the stone at arm’s length and walked it back to his pickup. He pulled a satchel from the passenger side floorboards, tossed it onto the bench seat, and fished around inside it with his free hand. He came up with a crusty old handkerchief, which he wrapped around the stone. He shoved the bundle back inside the satchel and closed the flap, careful to latch it in place. He didn’t trust the old thing and didn’t want it worming its way out of the bag while he was driving. For all Joe knew, it could be filled with baby devil spiders just waiting to burst out and crawl up his pants leg.
He leaned against the hood of the truck and watched the old witch hobble over to him. She’d been old as long as Joe could remember, but this was the first time he’d seen Mildred act her age. The ritual that had cleansed Pitchfork of the godsblood had taken its toll on all the Conclave’s members, but Mildred’s age made her slow to heal. He offered her his arm as she drew near, but the ancient crone waved his offer away.
“I’m old,” she grunted, “but I don’t need no man to help me walk around. That day comes, I reckon I’ll just take a big drink and go dig me a hole to lie down in.”
Joe chuckled and tilted his hat back to let the sun warm his face. “Whatever happened to you, at least it didn’t hurt your tongue any.”
Mildred shrugged. “Ya fight for what ya believe in; sometimes ya get hurt. Sure as hell ain’t the first time; hope to hell it won’t be the last. How’s Stevie doing?”
She’d tried to let the words slip out casual, just an old friend asking after the health of another, but Joe knew it was something else. Stevie was the Bog Witch, the leader of Pitchfork’s coven. Mildred wanted to know if her leader was still up to the task of
leading.
Joe smiled and gave Mildred a noncommittal shrug. “She’s tough, like nails.”
“Ain’t what I asked.”
“That’s the only answer you’re going to get out of me. You want to know anything else, go talk to the boss woman herself.”
Mentioning bosses brought Joe back around to wondering why the Long Man hadn’t called him about this mess. This was the kind of thing the Night Marshal should be checking out. Either the Long Man didn’t know about it, which gave Joe a whole other pack of troubles to worry about, or the Long Man didn’t want Joe to know about it. If it was the latter, Joe needed to move fast to keep himself from being cut out of Pitchfork’s loop. He didn’t know what happened to Night Marshals when they got fired, and he wasn’t in any hurry to find out. He hated the job, but he didn’t know what else he’d do.
“Mildred,” he said, “going to need you to do me a favor.”
The old woman gave a shrug. “I’ll do what I can, but ya know how it is with us old ladies.”
Joe smirked and shook his head. “I think you can handle this one. I need you to call this mess in to the sheriff.”
Mildred let out a long, low whistle. “Yer sure ya want that bitch involved?”
“No, I don’t want her involved.” Joe scrubbed the stubble on his chin with the palm of his left hand. “But I need some space to figure out what’s going on here, and the easiest way to get that space is to keep her out of my way.”
Joe knew the sheriff wouldn’t be able to let a crime like this go. She’d hang onto it like a pit bull with a bone, if for no other reason than to prove to Joe that it wasn’t a supernatural crime. If he were lucky, she’d spend the next couple of weeks trying to find a logical reason for a giant spider to have invaded her county. Meanwhile, he’d stay a few steps ahead of her and hunt down the real problem. By the time the sheriff figured out she’d been played, Joe’d have the whole mess wrapped up. He hoped.