Into the Weird: The Collected Stories of James Palmer

by James Palmer

  They rode their bikes to David's house, and he led her up the hill behind it toward the ravine where the spider now waited. It was a wide, deep scar that ran almost the whole length of the property, the perfect place to hide his monster.

  “What is it?” said Alyssa.

  “You'll see. Just come on.”

  When they reached the widest part of the ravine, David stopped. Much of the ragged opening was concealed in shadow, even during the brightest part of the day, and now that evening was approaching it was full of inky blackness.

  “It's a ravine,” she said.

  “Yes. But that's not what I want to show you. Come to the edge. Look down.”

  Alyssa stared at David uncertainly, then cautiously stepped beside him at the very edge of the precipice. She peered into the dimness and screamed.

  She jumped backward, away from the ragged scar in the earth and looked at David in disbelief.

  “What's the matter?” said David. “It's just a spider.”

  “B-but...it's huge!”

  “But it's mine,” said David. “Ours. If you want it to be.”

  There were tears in Alyssa's eyes now, and she was shaking. “W-what do you mean?”

  David took a deep breath. Time to lay it all out. He confessed his love for her, and told him his plans for running away together with the spider. They could be together forever and no one could harm them, not with the spider around. He even told her about the Wooten brothers and the other bullies the thing had fed upon with his help. When he was done, she was sobbing.

  “You're crazy,” she said finally, and David felt an enormous weight plunge into his stomach. He felt as if Alyssa ran over him with a truck.

  “No. I'm. Not,” he said, glancing down into the abyss at the spider, which was making its slow, methodical way to the top of the ravine.

  As the spider's black, multi-eyed face heaved into view, Alyssa screamed. She turned to run away, but David grabbed her right wrist in his left hand.

  “Let go of me,” she said, struggling. But she was weak, and David, he suddenly realized, was strong. He looked at the spider, expressionless eyes the size of hubcaps staring at them, mouthparts working, dripping venom.

  And he realized something. The spider hadn't eaten. It was hungry. And it was all David's fault. He had neglected it to be with Alyssa.

  “I'm sorry,” said David.

  At first Alyssa thought he was talking to her. But he wasn't. He was talking to the spider.

  “I didn't come see you, didn't feed you. I got....” He looked at Alyssa. “Distracted. It won't happen again. I promise.”

  “No. Please.”

  David was dragging her across the loose, rocky ground. Her shoes couldn't find traction. She tried to hit David with her free hand, but he grabbed that one too and pulled her closer to the spider.

  “I thought you were different,” David told Alyssa. “I thought you'd understand. I was wrong.”

  “But I won't tell. I promise!”

  “Yes you will,” said David. “You'll tell. But it isn't about that. My spider is hungry.”

  “Oh God,” she said.

  “No,” said David, his eyes cold and distant. “Spider.”

  He flung her away from him and she was falling, falling. Into the mouth of the spider.

  Somewhere in the Everglades

  “It doesn't work like that,” David told Stone. “I don't control it. I just feed it.”

  Stone was a stern-looking man in his early fifties with a reddish hair going steel gray at the temples. “I see,” he said. “So what you are telling me is that you have no control over this giant spider who has eaten everyone you've ever been close to, but left you unscathed. Interesting.”

  “Because I take care of it. I feed it. I keep it safe.” Until now, David thought.

  “Well, whatever. Great work, David.”

  Stone put his hand on David's shoulder. It was cold and hard. “Imagine, a heretofore previously undiscovered monster, on American soil, no less. And the U.S. government and their corporate puppets like Genecore or Oronos don’t know anything about it. Incredible.”

  “What are you going to do with him?” David thought about the vial he had stolen from Genecore, and shuddered.

  “We're going to use him,” said Stone, “enlist him into the Dissembler cause.”

  Dahlonega, GA

  There were still bullies in David’s life. He came home to one every day after school.

  Doug Hembrell was David’s stepfather. His father had died in a car accident when David was very young. He never knew his father, but he imagined he wouldn’t like Doug.

  Doug could be kind when it suited him. When it wasn’t in his best interest, he was cold and callous. And when he was drinking, which was more often than not these days, he was cruel and hard and abusive. His mother weathered it as best she could, but David didn’t know why she put up with him.

  As soon as David arrived home he knew Doug was in a bad mood. He was laid off again earlier in the week, and had been drinking for days. He turned on David as he walked in.

  “There you are. Go clean your room, boy.”

  “Y-yes sir,” said David, walking quickly past. He had to get out of his stepfather's reach before he --

  “Hey!” Doug grabbed David by his arm, squeezing hard. He yanked David back to stand in front of him in the recliner, spun him around. He stank of stale booze, and there was a beer can tucked between his legs.

  “I'm not finished with you yet,” said his stepfather, his speech slurred. He glanced toward the kitchen, wondering if his mother was home.

  “Don't look for your mama to save you,” said Doug. “She ain't here.”

  Thankfully, he released his iron grip on David's skinny arm. “That hurts, don't it? No wonder. Look at those flabby arms. You're soft and weak. Next year, you're goin' out for football, by God. I mean it this time. They'll finally make a man of ya. Or better yet,” he snapped his fingers. “We'll take you down to the mill, slap a shovel in your hand. You'll learn the value of hard work. Bet you'll clean your room then.”

  “I'm a senior,” said David softly, his head bowed.

  “What the hell did you say?”

  “I said I'm a senior. I won't be in high school next year.”

  “Oh, you think you're so smart, huh?” Doug lunged from his chair, rising up and socking David across the mouth. He staggered backward, tasting blood. It was an all too familiar sensation.

  “Well let me tell you something. You're nothin'! You hear me? Your father was a nothin', and you're a nothin'.”

  David watched his stepfather as tears clouded his vision. He wanted to cower, to run. Just as he had done a thousand times before. But he realized something. He was bigger now, while his stepfather was still the same. Only he wasn't really the same, he was older, fatter, his bloodstream filled with alcohol. For the first time David realized how small Doug was compared to him. And he decided he wasn't going to run from him anymore.

  David stood up to his full height, and looked down at his stepfather. And for the first time in his life Doug Hembrell looked small and fragile to him. And David thought, He would make a fine meal for the spider.

  “You think you're somethin' now? You think you can take me like a man? You're not a man, you're a cowardly little wimp!”

  Doug pushed David, knocking him back, but he stood his ground. “You're a drunk loser, Doug. You're the nothing.”

  “How dare you!” Doug backhanded David, and this time he fell to the ground, but he was done with the tears and the pain. He was angry now. He got up and punched his stepfather in the face. It was a glancing blow, and David was sure he hadn't done it right, for he had never punched anyone in his life. But it was enough.

  “I'm gonna kill you, boy!”

  David grinned and ran toward the kitchen and out the back door, his stepfather following closely behind.

  Somewhere in the Everglades

  “I won't lie to you, David. Things are no
t going that well for us.” The man ran a nervous hand through his slick hair and smiled. “But that just means we have reached the time of the Coming. The world's monsters can feel it. They've grown increasingly more agitated, according to news reports. And no one knows why. The Dissemblers know why.”

  David was just starting to figure out what he was getting into. The FBI had followed them into the swamp, and it was taking all of the Dissemblers' considerable offensive resources to hold them off, and David knew they couldn't do so for long. Hence, the spider.

  “It only comes out at night,” said David. “We always move at night.”

  Stone shrugged. “Suits me fine. It’s almost dark. The Feds don't know exactly where we are, yet. But I want to give them a real show, a final demonstration of Dissembler might, before the end comes. That's where your friend comes in.”

  David nodded. “What do you want it to do?”

  “The Electrigator is in this swamp. The U.S. Government has never been able to fully control it. All they can do is contain it within a ten-mile radius of the Everglades. We're in the center of that area right now.”

  David gulped. He didn't like the thought of a giant reptile lurking about somewhere right outside a flimsy little camouflaged trailer. Somewhere overhead he heard the thrum of a military helicopter.

  Stone glanced at the metal ceiling of the trailer. “They'll have us all soon, Electrigator or no. It is my hope that it will be too late by then.”

  David's heart raced. “Do you really think it's the time of the Coming?”

  “All the signs are there,” said Stone. “We must have faith.”

  David nodded. He looked outside at the gathering dark. He could feel the spider's presence out there, somewhere, could feel it calling to him.

  “It's moving,” said someone behind Stone. Stone turned toward the man, a black-clad technician sitting at a radar console.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir. There it is.”

  David looked. On a screen he saw a false color image of a large, slender red shape moving slowly. It wasn't a radar screen at all, as David had first thought, but a thermal imager. They were tracking the Electrigator's movements.

  “He's getting riled,” said Stone. “Just like every other giant beast on the planet. Let's give him something to draw his ire, shall we, David?”

  “This won't hurt the spider, will it?”

  Stone shrugged again. “That depends on your spider.”

  Dahlonega, Georgia

  David ran, his stepfather not far behind. Doug Hembrell was panting, sweating. David ran up the hill behind the house, entering the thick spring growth that ringed the property. Not far from here was the ravine, a crack in the world that hid his giant spider. This would be the last night both of them spent here.

  “I'm gonna kill you when I catch you, boy!” Doug Hembrell called from somewhere behind him.

  “Come on then, fat ass!” said David, his heart racing. It felt good to let loose on the old man. He just hoped he could reach the ravine before his stepdad caught up with him.

  “Just you wait!”

  David had reached the ravine. He could sense the spider down below, as if it was waiting on him to feed it, to bring it sustenance. All he had to do was jump across at just the right moment.

  “There you are, you little bastard,” said Doug. He stood just a few feet from David, sweat staining his undershirt.

  “Well, come on then,” said David. “Let's get this over with.”

  Doug lunged drunkenly at David, and he turned and leaped across a narrow stretch of the ravine he knew he could clear. But when he landed on the other side, Doug's huge hands were gripping his arms.

  “Didn't think I could make it, did ya, you little twerp?”

  Doug spun David around. “I'm gonna throw you down there. Your mom'll think you ran away. No one else will care. You don't have any friends, any girlfriends.”

  A shadow fell across his stepfather's broad back. “I have one friend,” David said.

  Doug Hembrell turned and looked directly into the multiple eyes of the spider as it reared its huge, chitonous bulk out of the ravine.

  “Jesus!”

  “Doug, meet my friend,” said David, shoving Doug hard. He staggered backward, then lost his footing on the uneven ground and slid backward, right into the spider's maw.

  They left home that night, David and the spider. It was time. Between Alyssa and now his stepfather, the police would start asking too many questions. He left a note for his mother on the kitchen counter. It contained only a single word: goodbye.

  It was hard moving with something so large, but David found it was not impossible. They moved at night, sticking to dense forest whenever they could. If they found a good hiding place for the spider, he would go into the nearest town and work odd jobs. It was a strange life, but it was David's. The well-being of his spider was all that mattered.

  At night David sometimes slept outside, near the spider but not too near, for the spider made him feel uneasy, on edge. And on these nights he would dream strange dreams. He dreamt he rode high on the spider’s chitonous back while the world burned. People ran in every direction as fire and even worse things rained from the sky. Most of the doomed people looked like his stepfather or the bullies who had tormented him in school. He watched their faces melt like candlewax and woke up laughing.

  Sometime long after, David joined the Dissemblers, and at his intake interview told them that he had a pet monster.

  The Everglades

  It had been three weeks since the Genecore assignment. The Feds were getting closer. David could hear helicopters flying over, and flashlight beams piercing the darkness in the distance. He knew they would be captured soon, but this was immaterial to him. He was going to see his spider one last time. Stone and the other Dissemblers went into defensive mode, prepping automatic weapons and setting up a perimeter. David knew it was simply straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic, but he knew it was a ritual that Stone needed to go through to stay sane. Overhead the sky was clear and not quite right. Donnie felt nervous and scared, and wanted to run inside and climb under a desk to get away from what was coming, even as he welcomed it.

  Electrigator was out there. He could hear it bellowing, could feel the damp earth tremble as it stomped closer and closer. He looked around furtively. Where was his spider?

  The Dissemblers shined klieg lights on the swamp, the powerful beams crisscrossing each other. Finally, one of the beams froze.

  “There!” someone called.

  David looked. Something very large and inky black moved among the klieg-lit greenery of the swamp. It was his spider.

  “There he is!” David called. “And he's hungry.”

  The Electrigator would make a fine meal for his hungry spider, David thought, smiling. The Dissemblers would get their show, and David would get to go out in a blaze of glory while the stars fell from the sky. It was a fitting end to his shiftless, chaotic life, and he was ready.

  The sky had turned red, like blood. News reports sited everything from magnetic interference in the Earth's upper atmosphere to air pollution, but people all over the world were already shouting about the end times.

  It would be fun, watching the world burn. The nations thought their monsters would protect them, but they would be insignificant in light of what was coming.

  David reached out his hand toward the spider, a smile on his face.

  “That it?” said Stone, coming to stand beside him. “Very impressive. But will it fight for us?”

  “No,” said David. He turned and locked eyes with Stone. “But it will fight for me.”

  Electrigator crashed out of the brush, a low, guttural roar coming from its open maw. Blue arcs of shimmering electricity ran along its green, armored bulk. It sensed a predator in its midst. The spider reared back defensively, lifting its front pair of legs, long as utility poles, high into the air. David sensed the enmity coming from the thing. This would be a
good battle.

  “We should probably move back,” said Stone. “Electrigator is infamous for his unpredictability. And he has your spider outclassed in weight alone.”

  “He can do it,” said David, almost defensively.

  “No matter. This planet won't last another few hours. Would you get a look at that sky! It's everything Coker envisioned! We're a part of history, David. History!”

  The spider and Electrigator came together in combat. The spider had the advantages of greater mobility and multiple appendages, not to mention its venom and spinnerets that could weave webbing the strength and thickness of steel cables. The Electrigator could generate enormous amounts of electricity. David agreed with Stone; it was going to be a good fight, no matter the victor.

  The titans locked jaws and appendages. The spider gripped the giant gator's head with its long, slender legs and tried to sink its fangs into Electrigator's thick hide. The current danced along the gator’s vast bulk, and lightning flashed across the spider’s black shell-like hide. It released its grip, jumping back from the predator, but seemed otherwise unfazed.

  “They are amazing, aren’t they?” said Stone. The drone of helicopters and the buzz of airboats swarmed closer. “The Dissemblers believe the world’s monsters are a hindrance to whatever is coming. But I think they can also be a tool, don’t you, David?”

  David nodded. Everyone was a tool in some greater mechanism. He was the spider’s tool for getting big and strong. He was also a tool of the Dissemblers, stealing that genetic material grown from the Unagi gene that Genecore had been experimenting with. It had all come to this—a final stand with the government while the sky fell down around them. It would be just like his dream.

  Stone shivered. “That spider of yours really gives me the creeps. I’ve never been afraid of spiders, but, man. Something about it.”

  David looked at Stone. “He does that. It’s something that emanates from him.” David knew that others could feel the spider’s influence sometimes, even if they didn’t know what it was. It was why he could never hang around in one place for too long. Sooner or later, the spider started driving people crazy. He wondered if Electigator felt it too.