Phantom

by Thomas Tessier

  He had prepared his mother and father for this in advance, telling them he would be gone all day, hiking and catching frogs and crayfish. He led them to believe he would be with Peeler and Cloudy all the time. His parents had no objections, so long as he promised to be careful and to keep his baseball cap on. It was the first time in his life that Ned had gone well beyond an innocent fib with his parents. He didn't like the feeling it gave him, but he couldn't think of any other way to handle the matter. It bothered him, too, that if he never returned from the spa the lie would stand and forever color his last hours with his mother and father. Ned thought it might be a good idea to leave a note for them. He could put it among his clothes in the bureau so that they wouldn't find it until some time later—if, and only if, the worst had come to pass. But when he tried to write the note, he ran into difficulties. He saw again how defeating the problem was, how impossible to explain. Finally he gave up and wrote simply: "Mom and Dad, I love you always. Ned." He dated the paper, put it in an envelope and slipped it in beneath some clean shirts in the second drawer of his bureau.

  Ned also wanted to see Peeler and Cloudy. They were the two friends he had made since moving to Lynnhaven. His only two friends. But he was afraid that if he saw them again he would be unable to keep from telling them everything, including his plans to go back to the spa. That would upset them too much and quite possibly undermine his resolve as well. No, he could only hope that he would see them again, but first he had to go through with this other matter on his own.

  As Ned walked purposeful1y through the streets of Lynnhaven he let his mind begin to consider what might actually happen to him that day. It was the one question he had done his best to avoid—not so much out of fear, although there was that, but more because he didn't want to confuse himself with all sorts of possibilities. He needed to concentrate on what was, and nothing else. But now that he was on his way he felt free to think about it. The assumption behind this journey to the spa was that once Ned was there again something would happen. But what? An encounter with the devil? A battle for his soul? A huge phosphorescent balloon? A phantom? Or nothing. In a way, that last was the most worrying. If Ned passed the day uneventfully at the spa, would it mean that he had been wrong, that no phantom haunted him, that the crisis was all in his head? Or rather, that his gambit had been declined? He knew it was too easy, and foolish, to dream of triumph. It was not impossible, however, that he could survive. He believed this, as he had to. The alternative was that he would be taken. That he would die. Death; it could happen. Ned was well aware of that possibility—it had prompted his note to his parents—but he kept it locked away within him. To dwell on it would be paralyzing. Besides, people always believe they will somehow live through almost anything; the human mind rejects the notion of its own imminent death, and the young mind, especially, barely conceives the idea of death.

  Ned crossed the old railroad tracks and made his way to the long drive. This time he would enter the spa from the front. This approach was useful in two ways. It was far simpler and easier than scaling the back wall again, saving Ned time and strength, and it was also a psychological ploy, a kind of reversal in his favor, as he returned by the route he had taken in fleeing the spa on his previous visit.

  By the time he reached the front door, any fear he felt had been overtaken by a growing sense of anticipation and excitement. He might be walking through the gates of hell, but it was an adventure! Ned knew he could be making the biggest mistake of his life, but the day was right and he was as ready as he would ever be. He reminded himself of the possible advantages on his side. Perhaps there were limits to the unknown power Ned faced. Perhaps challenging it in this way really was the smartest thing to do. As he stood outside the enormous building Ned realized that he might succeed in another way. If nothing at all happened today he would then at least have managed to conquer the old spa, defusing it and eliminating it as one of the elements in the nightmare. Yes, he told himself, he was doing the right thing. One way or the other, Ned's mission today had to be a step forward.

  The cross he had made from two sticks of wood was tucked under his belt. He crawled past the loose boards in the doorway and stood up. He was inside, once more.

  The first thing Ned looked for was the place on the floor where the threatening words had been scrawled in the dust. He had obliterated them with his sneaker, and now he saw that nothing had changed; the message had not been rewritten. It was a good sign.

  Nor did the rest of the large entrance hall appear to be any different. Although Ned had been there only for a few minutes the last time, it seemed quite familiar to him. Not evil, but dead. Not dangerous, just ... sad. Again he found it easy to imagine how splendid the spa must have been when it was alive with people and activity. A shimmering palace of wealth and beauty. But Ned knew it was important for him to remember that this place was now just a ruin, nothing more.

  His plan was to climb the wide stairway directly to the top floor, explore the rooms there and then do the same on the next floor—and so make his way back down to ground level. By noon, Ned calculated, he would have covered the entire spa building, with the exception of the cellar, which he would decide about when the time came. It was not that Ned was afraid of descending into the darkness again; he carried two flashlights and extra batteries for just that purpose. But he knew that if he put the rest of the spa behind him first he would be in an even stronger position to take on the cellar.

  The stairs wound up and around the central atrium. Paint or paper hung in tattered ribbons from the walls. Ned touched one strip and it crumbled to powdery flakes in his fingers. Like some strange creature that sheds its skin from the inside, he thought. After that, Ned didn't pause until he had arrived on the uppermost landing.

  There, he was surprised to discover how different the visual perspectives were. The rich blue morning sky above seemed to be literally sitting on the roof of the spa, so close and tangible that Ned almost believed he would be able to grab a piece of it if only he could reach up through the broken frame of the skylight. It was a remarkable illusion. Perhaps this was how Jack felt when he climbed through the clouds to the top of the beanstalk.

  Ned turned and peered down the stairwell. He gasped—it was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The ground floor seemed to zoom away from him as if it were the ever-receding bottom of an abyss. The whole mansion felt like it was tilting slowly around Ned, trying to push or pour him off the top floor. He gripped the marble banister tightly and shut his eyes to fight the terrible sensation that he was slipping over the edge. There was something attractive, dangerously attractive, about looking down, and Ned knew he couldn't give in to it. Could the building really spin around? No—but then, why did Ned's body feel as if it were hanging upside down? These are illusions, games, tricks, he told himself. Just the spa's way of saying hello. Use your sense, and your senses; don't let them be used against you. Gradually, he regained a measure of confidence. He felt okay, sure that he wouldn't betray himself. He opened his eyes. Vision apparently all right, and right side up. Ned backed away from the stairwell. He was here to explore the rooms, not to gape at the view.

  The landing was strewn with debris that had been blowing in for years through the open skylight, mostly rotting leaves and twigs. The summer heat had pretty well dried out the place, but today the air was pleasantly cool, with a sweet, woody smell. Taking care to watch out for snakes, Ned moved toward the passage on his left. When he had examined that wing he would come back for the other. As he approached, the corridor made him think of a cave, dark and beckoning. Something was wrong. Ned knew from his observations outside that all the windows were wide open on the upper floors of the building, so the corridor should be reasonably well-lit. But no, maybe not. All the inside doors could be closed, and daylight from the open skylight wouldn't penetrate far into these corridors. Ned took one of the flashlights from his knapsack, switched it on and stepped into the gloomy tunnel.

  He cried
out immediately and jumped back, stumbling and losing his balance. He had dropped the flashlight, and now he scurried to retrieve it. It still worked. Cautiously, Ned inched forward again, wondering What did I see? Something startling ... but he didn't feel frightened by it. It was like a wall, a barrier of some sort—but more than just that. The light beam probed the darkness. There was a gauzy gray veil suspended from the ceiling to the floor, filling the hallway. Tiny shapes flitted around behind it—or rather, in it. Spiders, Ned realized. It was an enormous spider web, dozens, hundreds of them, built up to form a whole colony. They had taken over the corridor in this wing.

  Ned went back onto the landing and found a piece of wood. He poked it into the webbing, which felt unusually firm, and tried to carve out an opening. To his amazement, the webs ran deeper than he thought possible. There was no end in sight. And as soon as Ned started damaging the structure, several spiders danced out toward him. He stepped back and tossed the stick aside. As far as he knew, there was only one poisonous spider in the United States, and that was the black widow. He had no idea what these spiders were but he did know they were not black widows. Nonetheless, he wasn't about to assume that they were harmless. They looked rather aggressive.

  Ned went back to the landing, and this time he came up with a lump of fallen plaster. It was crumbly, but- there was enough of it to hold together. He took off his knapsack and flung the piece of plaster as hard as he could into the spider web. It should have flown through the flimsy stuff and bounced along the floor. But, instead, it disappeared into the darkness and made no sound at all. Ned couldn't believe it. He got another hunk of plaster and hurled it with such force that he felt a twinge of pain in his arm muscle. But again the missile was swallowed up silently. What kind of spiders are these? he wondered. .

  Ned held both flashlights together and moved as close as he dared to the webs. He put his head against one wall of the corridor and directed the light along that side. The spider colony stretched back as far as the light reached. They've completely filled the passageway, Ned thought, from here to the end of the wing. His lips formed the word "wow," but the sound stayed in his dry throat.

  Now he turned the light to the center, where he had torn a small opening with the stick. Spiders, in uncountable numbers, moved about in the depths. The astonishing network of webs glinted like dull silver lace. There were several small tunnels swirling through the web, reminding Ned of Swiss cheese. They keep the air moving through the colony, he thought, as well as providing a kind of internal highway system. And the larger passages would also bring insects into the interior. The whole thing must be incredibly well organized and put together.

  Ned noticed a few bulky shapes hanging here and there in the spider kingdom. They were dark, wrapped in web-shrouds, and they hung like macabre Christmas-tree decorations, or shrunken heads. Birds? Ned had never heard of spiders killing a bird, but he was beginning to believe that anything was possible in this place. It wasn't so fantastic, now that he thought about it. Sparrows flying in through the open skylight, getting caught in that mighty web, and then being bitten to death by scores of small spiders. It was the sort of thing you might imagine happening in a tropical jungle, but that didn't mean it couldn't occur here. There was no other way Ned could explain what he saw. Do spiders lay eggs? Probably, but he wasn't sure. Anyhow, those things didn't look like egg clusters-they were far too big for that. They looked like food, bagged and hung. Or ... trophies.

  Ned crossed the landing to the other wing. He came up against the same thing: a massive colony of spiders. So, they ruled the entire top floor of the spa, both sides, with only the exposed central landing as a clear zone. Ned sat there for a few minutes, looking left, then right. He had seen large spider webs before, but nothing like this. At least there was nothing supernatural about it; it might be a very unusual natural phenomenon, but it was just that, a natural phenomenon. The sort of thing that must have a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation. Perhaps the water at the spa was bad (something to do with the scandals decades ago), and an odd mutant strain of your everyday house and garden variety spider had developed here, one that built elaborate colonies of tough webs. Why not? It might be an item for Burgess Meredith and "Those Amazing Animals" on TV, but it had nothing to do with Ned's problem.

  He glanced again at the corridor closest to the top of the stairs. Something seemed to be moving there. A few spiders on the floor. But they don't hunt, Ned thought. They wait for their prey to blunder into the web and get caught. Maybe this was another aspect of the unusual phenomenon—that there were so many of them they were driven to search among the leaves on the landing for bugs. Colonies this size would certainly require a lot of food.

  A lot of food ... ? No, that's crazy, Ned thought. But now he noticed that there were more spiders crawling around at the top of the stairs. What were they trying to do, cut off his only exit and trap him there? It was a silly idea. They were small spiders, probably even incapable of piercing human skin. Still, their numbers were increasing and Ned thought again of the birds, or whatever they were, hanging in the webs. Drained and mummified. Ned began to feel uneasy. He put the flashlights away, stood up and slipped the knapsack on over his shoulders.

  A second wave of spiders had gathered around the entrance to the other corridor. Ned was in the middle. Unease turned to worry, and then anger. This couldn't be what it looked like. It was ridiculous, impossible. Vaguely, he recalled the tale of Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. That was not a true story, Ned knew. But what about that morning not so long ago when he had awakened early to find he couldn't move? Even his eyes had been stitched shut then, and he had felt something like .a spider on his face. That had been real, and perhaps it was an omen he should have given more thought to afterwards. What if the spider, and these spiders, were but one manifestation of the phantom presence he had sensed and the voice he had heard? Wasn't it possible for a supernatural force to change itself from one shape into another—like a vampire into a bat, or a man into a werewolf?

  Why are you standing here?

  The spiders advanced out onto the landing in irregular surges. They formed a gray-brown carpet, rolling inexorably toward the center. When one spider came close to Ned he flicked it away with the toe of his shoe, but it was as if his foot had acted on its own. The spiders no longer worried Ned.

  Move.

  They were fascinating to watch. They must have attained a very high level of cooperation for colonies of this size to come about and survive. It was possible to see them all as components of the greater whole, the higher unity, not unlike the volvox, Ned's favorite microscopic creature. Yes, these spiders were truly extraordinary.

  Get out of here.

  Ned didn't want to move. Now the spiders reminded him of a tide, lapping gently closer. Why, it might even be nice to lie down and let it wash over him. It would feel cool, but pleasant, and somehow ... delicious. That's right. Yes, he could lie down and let it bathe him, and he could leave his mouth open and let the tide splash in, cool and sweet as the best water. Just a few drops. At first.

  It's hypnotizing you. Get out while you can!

  Ned's feet moved, and the movement made him feel dizzy.

  He closed his eyes, hoping it would stop. With each step he took he heard terrible squishing sounds. They seemed to be trying to say something to him, but he couldn't make out what it was. The sounds were cries of agony, pleas for him to stop what he was doing. Every step crushed dozens of them, and their noise was the anguish of loss. Don't do this to us, it said. Don't murder us, don't leave us. But still Ned's body moved and the sounds grew more unbearable. Then his foot came down on a clear marble stair. His shoe slid on the spider pulp it carried and Ned wheeled through the air, crashing on hard stone and falling. Pain snapped him out of the daze he was in and he managed to stop himself after he had bumped down about a half-dozen steps. He sat up and leaned back against the inside wall on the stairway. There was a lump on his forehead and his left
arm ached because he had landed on it, but apparently there were no serious injuries. Suddenly Ned yelled and grabbed his leg. It was as if a hot needle had been jabbed into his calf. He pulled his pant leg back and saw the single spider. He snatched it up and squashed it between his fingers, then quickly wiped his hand vigorously on his jeans. Gray slime, the same horrid stuff that still clung to the bottoms and sides of his shoes. Ned felt sick, and he couldn't move for several minutes.

  The spiders. They had been all around him up there. It came back to him in a rush, and he shuddered at the thought of what had almost happened to him. It really is here today, he decided somewhat ruefully. He was in a different ballgame now. Twice already he had come close to giving in to it, surrendering himself like a lamb for the slaughter. How much longer would his strength—and luck—hold out?

  The spiders. How close he had come to lying down and letting them sweep over him. Unable to penetrate human skin? Ha. They would have eaten through his eyeballs and poured down his throat. Ned pulled himself to his feet and looked back up the stairs. They were still there, waiting for him should he be so foolish as to return. Sorry, boys. I'm not your prize. Be glad I forgot to bring a flame-thrower. But behind the mental quips, Ned felt shaken. It had been that close. He scraped the spider pulp off his shoes as best he could and then went down to the next landing.

  The corridors on both sides were unobstructed here. The doors in each wing stood slightly ajar, providing sufficient illumination in the hallways. Each room seemed to invite Ned to enter. On the floor above he had been unable to explore a single room; here, every room was open to him. He didn't know whether to feel glad or worried. Where to begin? At least this looked more like what you would expect of an abandoned building.