Screaming to Get Out & Other Wailings of the Damned

by J. F. Gonzalez

  "Well of course, dumb ass!" Robert said. "That's how they get their prey. A bug flies into its web and starts struggling, the spider swoops down and gets it."

  "I don't think this thing is eating bugs," Cathy said. Her eyes were still wide with fright, her face pale and sweaty.

  Robert wiped his hands on his greasy t-shirt. "Let's see how big this giant spider really is."

  Robert followed us to Mrs. Simpson's house again. On the way, he asked where she was. Cathy told him she was working at the library. Robert nodded as we raced slightly ahead of him, excited and dreading what he would see.

  The three of us held back slightly and let Robert step up to the still open shed door and peer inside.

  Robert stared into the shed for a long time. He looked like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

  After awhile he said, "Jesus!"

  I stepped forward to take another look. I suppose in hindsight I did it to confirm what I had seen before, as if taking a second look would tell me that what I’d seen had not been a figment of an overactive imagination.

  The spider had resumed its place in the center of the web. The stick Mark had touched the web with had fallen down and become caught in its strands. It hung about a third of the way down, dangling two feet above the dusty wooden floor. The afternoon sunlight cast brilliant splotches of light in the shed, making the spider more visible. I now saw that those strange lumps on its body were more pronounced, almost discolored. It looked like the spider was diseased or was some hideous mutation.

  "Is that the stick you used?" Robert asked softly.

  Mark nodded. "Yeah."

  "And it went at it really fast?"

  The three of us nodded.

  Cathy, Mark, and I were huddled behind Robert; three little kids hiding behind the protective shield of their big brother. Robert hovered in front of the entranceway, peering inside intently. "Did you see those?" He pointed at the web. "Those lumps that are wrapped up?"

  "Don't spiders wrap up their prey?" I asked. "You know, the bugs they eat?"

  "I think those bundles are too big to be bugs, don't you Jimmy?"

  I saw what Robert was getting at. One of the lumps was smack dab in the middle of the web. I couldn't think of any bug as big as the palm of my hand. The only thing I could think of that could have gotten trapped in the web, at that particular spot, was a bird.

  Robert stepped back and took a quick surveillance of Mrs. Simpson's house. "Have either of you been inside this shack before?"

  The three of us shook our heads. Cathy said, "I don't even think Mrs. Simpson's been inside for a while."

  Robert stepped around the rear of the shed, than came back. "She has a wood pile in the back for her fireplace," he said. "And her house borders on those woods. This thing probably has it made sitting in that shack – it's the perfect haven for mice."

  "This thing eats mice?" Mark squealed. He was looking scared again.

  "You think those things wrapped in silk are bugs?" Robert asked, motioning inside the shack toward the spider.

  Mark saw his older brother's point and shuddered.

  Robert reached inside quickly and, with a swift motion, closed the door to the shack. "Let's get out of here. I want to call the school."

  "Shouldn't we call the police?" I asked.

  “I’m gonna call the school,” Robert said. He took a step back and started heading back toward the house. “I’m on good terms with my science teacher. He’ll want to see this.”

  As it turned out, Robert’s science teacher at Cocalico High was pissed at him due to Robert’s suspension from school for drinking with Mike, Cathy’s older brother, off-campus. Robert came back from the house, a look of dejection on his face as he told us the news. “So what are we gonna do?” Mark asked.

  We debated on what to tell Mrs. Simpson. Cathy wanted to tell her; she didn’t want her friend going into the shack to get a book and be attacked by the spider. Robert shot that down, saying, “If she wanted to get an old book, she would have by now and she would have seen that fuckin’ thing.”

  In the end, after considerable debate, it was decided we wouldn’t tell anybody about the spider. Robert wanted to take pictures of it the following morning when the light was right. He made us promise not to tell anybody.

  I dreamed about the spider that night. I dreamed that I was with Cathy and I had just made the move to hold her hand when I felt something land on the back of my neck. I felt a prickly sensation, like twigs scraping my back, and I realized it was the spider. It had somehow gotten out of the shed and was crawling up my back. I woke up, panting, the sheets drenched in sweat and realized I was dreaming. I lay back in bed, trying to catch my breath, looking up at the ceiling of my cluttered bedroom and I saw it the minute it descended on me, like a yo-yo unraveling swiftly from its string. The spider. It had been on the ceiling of my room, crawling the way spiders sometimes will in your house, and it just so happened to be right over my face when it decided it wanted to come down off the ceiling and it started lowering itself quickly, right on my face.

  I yelled and sprang off the bed swiftly, waving my arms around frantically. I crashed into my bureau and got the light on, still screaming as my parents rushed in. “What’s going on?” my mother asked as I ran to her, babbling about the spider that had tried to get on my face.

  That was the granddaddy of all nightmares. A nightmare within a nightmare. A quick look around the room revealed there was no spider, that it was all a horrible dream.

  How I got back to sleep that night, I don’t remember. The next thing I remember is hearing Cathy outside on my front porch. My dad had already gone to work and mom was in the basement doing laundry, so I stepped outside to see her. My heart leaped in my chest when I saw her. There were tears streaming down her face. She hugged her thin frame, her blonde hair hanging about her face in tangled disarray. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s my brother,” Cathy said, her voice cracking. “He’s got one of the kittens Whiskey had. And he’s...he’s...”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. It should have occurred to me when Cathy put the words “her brother” and “kitten” together in the same sentence that Mike had found out about the spider, but it was still early enough in the morning that my mind wasn’t as sharp as it usually is.

  “Robert told him about the spider!” Cathy cried. “Mike didn’t believe him, so they snuck over to Mrs. Simpson’s place last night and Mike saw it! I just found out a minute ago when he got one of Whiskey’s kittens and ...”

  Cathy didn’t need to tell me the rest. Cathy had been trying to find homes for her cat’s six kittens since they were born three weeks ago. Two of them had found homes quickly, but there were four left and so far there had been no takers. Cathy’s dad told her he would drown them if they weren’t out of the house by the end of the week.

  “We’ve got to stop him!” Cathy said, her blue eyes imploring me to help her. My resolve crumbled then. It always did when I was around her. After all, I had a schoolboy crush on her.

  We raced over to Mrs. Simpson’s, which was a six-block hike. On the way over, Cathy told me that she’d tried to get her brother to give her back the kitten but he’d laughed and shoved her to the floor before running out of the house. He was probably over at the Simpson shed now. I hoped we weren’t too late, but when we rounded the corner of Briar and raced up to the Simpson property, I saw we were already too late.

  Robert and Mike were standing by the open door of the shed. He was still holding the kitten. Yes, I know I just said we were already too late even though we got there before he could throw the kitten into the web, but he must have been astonished at what he was looking at. Cathy screamed, “Mike! Please don’t do it!”

  That snapped Mike out of his temporary state of awe. He and Robert turned to us, and I caught a glimpse of shame in Robert’s eyes as we raced to the open door of the shed. Cathy rushed up to her brother and grabbed his arm. “Please don’t do it! Please let
me have her!”

  “Get away, Cathy,” Mike said. He easily pushed her aside; he was a good eight inches taller than her and strong. Mike was one of those kids every town seems to have; the kind the police know on a first name basis.

  I was able to catch a quick glimpse inside the shed. The spider was still there, still hanging in that giant web, and still ugly.

  “Give her to me!” Cathy cried.

  Robert looked uneasy. “Come on, Mike. This isn’t cool.”

  Then, with a sudden swift movement, Mike flung the kitten into the shed, directly into the web.

  Cathy screamed.

  For a minute time seemed to slow down. I watched as the kitten flew through the air. Had the spider web not been there, or had it been a normal web, the kitten would have sailed through the shed and hit the back wall and fallen to the ground, probably unhurt. Instead it got snagged in the web immediately. There was a jittery motion on the web as the kitten struck it and was caught and the spider, which had been sitting in the center of the web like a normal spider, immediately lunged at its prey so fast I was stunned. I saw a quick flash of what looked like razor sharp fangs as big as a full-grown cat’s claws, and then the kitten screamed.

  If it hadn’t been for Robert, Cathy would have lunged into the web after the kitten to save it. Instead, he grabbed her and held her back. I’m ashamed to say I was so scared by seeing this that I took several scrambling steps back. So did Mike—apparently his act of animal cruelty resulted in something that stunned even him. Cathy screamed and struggled against Robert, who held her and kept her away from the shed. We watched as the spider’s long legs wrapped around the kitten and began spinning silk around it, rolling its convulsing prey up.

  “Jesus,” Robert said, holding on tight to Cathy.

  Cathy cried.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  A few minutes later, as we sat staring at the spider devouring its prey, Mike finally spoke. “That was fucking cool!”

  CATHY STAYED WITH me that morning. After Robert made sure we were okay, he led Mike away, muttering and swearing at him, telling him he was the biggest asshole on the face of the planet. I sat with Cathy on a patch of grass in a nearby field and tried to be consoling. I finally got the nerve to put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned into me, sobbing against my neck for a while. Then, she quieted down a little.

  “We need to tell somebody,” I said. I don’t know how many times I repeated this, but Cathy only shook her head.

  “If we call the police I’ll get in trouble,” she said. I knew immediately what she was talking about. Even if the police investigated and saw the giant spider and somehow managed to kill it (would they shoot it? Surely it was big enough to be shot with a .22), their follow-up would lead to Cathy’s house and they would have to talk to her father, and Cathy would get in trouble. Yes, I realize that flies in the face of all logic, but you didn’t know what Cathy’s home life was like. If Mike was bad news, her old man was worse.

  We eventually went to Cathy’s house and snuck inside. Mike and Robert weren’t around, and Cathy’s dad was at work. Her mom was asleep on the sofa. The place smelled like cigarettes and beer. We gathered Whiskey and the rest of her kittens up and took them to my house. Thankfully, my parents weren’t around, so I was able to make a nest for them in an old worn basket my old cat, Frisky, liked to sleep in when she was alive (she’d died the previous summer; we never did get another cat). Cathy dashed back home and came back with a box of cat food. We got bowls down from the kitchen cabinets and prepared a little area in my closet for them, complete with water and food bowls, and Cathy found an old box outside and lined it with newspaper for their litter pan. When we were done, Cathy hugged me. “Thank you,” she said, the sincerity in her voice brimming with gratitude. “Thank you so much!”

  We spent the rest of that day in a meadow bordering the woods, lying on our backs gazing at the sky, talking. Mostly we talked about the spider and what Mike had done, but we also talked about Cathy’s home life. This was the first time Cathy came out and confirmed what I always suspected, and hearing it verbalized was somehow more chilling than merely suspecting it.

  “If I’d kept those kittens at the house, Mike would have fed them to that thing one at a time,” Cathy said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.

  I sensed somebody approaching and Cathy did, too. We sat up and watched as Robert and Mark approached us on the grassy knoll side of the meadow.

  “Where’s Mike?” Cathy asked.

  They sat down beside us. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” Robert said.

  “Why did you tell him?” Cathy asked.

  Robert ignored her. He looked truly ashamed at having told Mike about the spider. He looked out over the meadow at the hilly area of Ephrata where the Brossman Business Center was. “Your brother is talking about catching that spider and taking it home as a pet.”

  I shuddered at the thought and glanced at Cathy. Her face paled.

  Robert turned to her. “I swear to God, Cathy, if I’d known he was going to do...what he did, I would have—”

  Cathy turned away from him and Robert’s voice trailed off. We were silent for a moment.

  Robert broke the brief silence. “He’s serious about catching that spider and taking it home. When I left your house, he was looking for a jar big enough to hold it in, but I don’t think he’ll find one.”

  “You serious?” I looked at Robert now. “He really intends to try to catch that thing?”

  “You’re damn right,” Robert said.

  “He’s gonna get me,” Cathy said. She sat up with her knees bent, hugging her legs. “If he manages to get it, he’s going to take it home and he’ll eventually try something with it.” She looked at Robert as she said this. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Robert nodded. He looked troubled. “Yeah.”

  For a moment I didn’t understand. I knew Cathy came from a household of alcoholics, that the entire family was screwed up, that she was the only one in that house with any sense of decency, which was why I loved her so much. I could not understand how somebody like Cathy, who was smart and talented and beautiful and kind, could be allowed to live beneath the same roof with such utterly worthless pieces of shit excuses for human beings like her brother and parents.

  Cathy turned to me and her blue eyes met mine. “Mike knows I’m scared of that thing now and I wouldn’t put it past him to use it to hurt me.” Her voice seemed to quaver as she spoke. “I’m scared, Jimmy. I’m so scared...”

  Robert scuttled closer to her and tried to comfort her. “Listen, it’ll be okay. I can talk to Mike, maybe get him to—”

  “What are you going to do? Tell him to not bother me? You know he’s not gonna do that! My parents aren’t going to do shit, and they’re not going to care what he does. If I complain, my dad will just kick my ass anyway. And I wouldn’t put it past Mike to wait until late at night to try something.” Tears began to well from the corner of Cathy’s eyes. “He’s always teased and tortured me with stuff—bugs, snakes...if he knows I’m scared of something, he finds a way to torture me with it. And that spider...if he even tries teasing me with it, tries faking me out by telling me he’s going to let it out...like if he doesn’t feed it for awhile and it’s real hungry and if he gets me or something, pins me down and holds it over my face while it’s in a jar...you saw how fast that thing is...”

  I shuddered at the thought. I didn’t want to think about what could happen. I could imagine Cathy’s scenario too well. If a spider as big as a cat could eat a kitten—and I’d once seen a regular spider catch and eat a fly that was twice its size—why couldn’t this spider cause considerable damage to a human being?

  The thought of that thing sinking its fangs into Cathy’s face as she screamed wouldn’t leave my mind and I reached for her hand. She let me, her fingers twining with mine.

  It was Cathy’s idea to set the thing on fire. We ta
lked about it for another hour or so and finally convinced Robert that a) his best friend really was a psycho and, b) if Mike could capture the spider he would hurt his little sister. I asked Robert where Mike was now and he said Mike had an appointment with his juvenile probation officer at noon, but would probably be back around two in the afternoon. That gave us just three hours to do something. I still wanted to tell the police, but Robert, Mark, and Cathy shot that down. Cathy was still afraid of the repercussions from her father, and Robert still thought he could convince his science teacher to come down and take a look at it. Mark was too scared to do anything except defer to his older brother. “I’ve been thinking about it,” Mark said. “Robert and I talked about it last night. It might be some kind of mutation due to what happened at Three Mile Island nine years ago. I mean...there was all kinds of shit going on here then. Our dad told us that around the same time TMI happened, some guys who worked there were busted by the state for illegally dumping radioactive material somewhere close by. I don’t remember exactly where, but it wasn’t far from here. And what if something got infected? You know...some animal or something, and it died, and then flies landed on it and laid their eggs and shit and...well, you know what happens next. Anyway, suppose these flies got infected or something, and what eats flies? Spiders. And nature kept going on its course until things just started mutating and then...”

  “That’s dumb,” I said. “If that’s the case, how come nobody else has seen giant mutated flies or more of these giant spiders or something?”

  “I don’t know!” Robert said. He shrugged. “It’s the only thing Mark and I could think of. How else could that thing get so big?”

  “It looked sick,” Cathy said, still hugging her knees. “Did you see it? It looked all messed up and diseased-looking.”

  “That’s my thought exactly!” Robert said. “Maybe this spider is just the first one, and if it is that’s why nobody’s seen anything.”

  “And all its little brothers and sisters aren’t fucked up like this one?” I asked. “You know spiders lay like, five thousand eggs. Why aren’t there reports of people seeing more of these things?”