by Ronald Kelly
He did.
I didn't.
December 22
Bedtime story. Part Seven.
Oh, did I forget to tell you? The All-American family had a baby with them.
I was going to let it live, honest I was. But then I figured, hey, what kind of life is the kid going to have if I do? He will probably be shuffled off to some sleazy orphanage and be adopted by sadistic parents who will beat and abuse him and he will grow up to be a sick bastard... just like me.
So I took him down to the campground trash cans and left him there.
You know, where all the hungry bears hang out for breakfast.
January 7
Well, it's official now. The jury handed down their verdict and the trail is over. The death penalty. I get off just thinking about it.
In some states it is lethal injection, in others the gas chamber. Here in Tennessee it is Old Sparky... the tried and true electric chair.
As for my journal, this will be the last entry. The wire that I pried from the springs of my bunk is getting dull and the words are barely legible now. For, you see, the exploits I have penned have not been committed to paper... but to human flesh. I am a living tome; all my sins and atrocities have been carved into every inch of skin, or at least the places that I could reach.
Perhaps, following my execution, the grisly accounts of my life's work will be made public. Perhaps some unscrupulous individual will bribe a morgue attendant into letting them take photos of my body and they will end up in a sleazy tabloid or on some off-beat website. Then all the world will be privy to my pursuit of barbarity and perversion.
So, if you are browsing the internet during the late hours of the night, and come upon me... please, indulge your morbid curiosity.
Come... read my diary.
HOUSEWARMING
Exactly why Aunt Millie had willed him the house on Elkins Avenue was something Chuck Stuart had been trying to figure out since the old woman's funeral. He had finally come to the conclusion that she had done so purely out of spite.
Chuck had never been one of his late aunt's favorite nephews. As a teenager, his constant rebellion against authority had always rubbed her strict religious values the wrong way. Quite a few unsavory episodes in his wild lifestyle had distanced him and his aunt during the years and perhaps that was the main reason she had stuck him with that unsalable property on the low-rent side of town.
Yes, the single-story house on the half acre lot was completely without market value and for one distinct reason. It was infested with spiders. Brown recluse spiders they were, sometimes called fiddlebacks because of the pale violin shape across their back. They were poisonous little devils; not as much so as a black widow, but close. They had a nasty bite to them, causing nerve and tissue damage and, if there was an allergic reaction, death.
Aunt Millie had lived there until five years ago, when Uncle Pete died. Then she had moved into an apartment and rented the little white clapboard house to various low-income families from time to time. Her property in west Nashville had netted her two hundred bucks monthly... until the spider problem began. It had gotten so bad, in fact, that the tenants had finally gotten fed up and moved out, leaving their possessions behind.
Several exterminators had been hired to fumigate the entire house, but it didn't seem to do any good. In a month's time their number had increased tenfold. It got to the point where his aunt was scared to even venture into the house herself. She could see the spiders clustered on the inside of the windows, skittering across the whitewashed siding outside and up the rain gutters. Finally she had closed up the house permanently, stapling sheets of clear plastic over the doors and windows until it looked as though it was encased in cellophane, hermetically sealed against the outer world. Millie would have had the place torn down, but no demolition crew would go near it. Many a dozer operator got cold feet thinking about plowing into that old house and becoming immediately covered with the tiny brown spiders.
And now here Chuck was checking the place out for himself. The only reason he was there was because of his own desperation. Chuck's financial situation was pretty depressing. He was a session musician by trade and a good one. He worked the recording studios along Music Row, playing lead guitar and fiddle whenever the demand arose. Lately it had not and he found himself living uncomfortably beyond his means.
Therefore, he figured he might weasel out of the lease on his own riverfront apartment and live there for a while. That was if those hair-raising tales about spider infestation panned out as being just another one of his late aunt's vivid exaggerations. She had been quite infamous for making mountains out of molehills.
Chuck eyed the house with apprehension as he walked up the weedy sidewalk and climbed the porch. The front door was blocked by a wrinkled sheet of heavy plastic, the type painters used for drop cloths. Chuck unfolded his pocketknife and split it down the center, watching nervously for the first sign of spiders. So far nothing. He dug the keys from his pocket, unlocked the door and, armed with a flashlight and a can of heavy-duty spider spray, stepped into the cramped and stuffy living room.
The room was dark and dusty, the blinds drawn and the second-hand furniture sitting in shadowy lumps, deserted by the previous tenants. There was even a color television in the far corner. Cripes, they must have been in a hell of a big hurry to get out of here, he concluded. He directed his light upon the dusty floorboards, along the drapes and the uneven plaster walls. But still there was no visible sign of those nasty fiddlebacks.
He took the grand tour of the place, vaguely remembering it from the times he had visited there as a child. It was a small house built in the post-war forties. Just a living room, a couple of bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. As he entered each room, he expected to see fleeting movement and the corners shrouded in tattered web. But, except for the light powdering of dust and the rancid smell of mildew, the house seemed perfectly normal.
Chuck breathed a sigh of relief and smirked at his aunt's stupidity. The joke's on you, dear aunt, he thought with a shake of his head. There aren't any spiders here. Hell, I haven't seen a single spider since I walked into this damned place.
On the spur of the moment he decided to rush home, pack a few things, and spend the night there. Sort of trial run and a further snubbing of his late relative's groundless phobia of spiders. There would be no electricity, but he could rough it for a couple of nights at least.
He examined the master bedroom. There he found a sturdy wood-framed bed, complete with mattress. He sat down and bounced a few times, testing the springs. It'll do till I can tote my bed over. Yeah, this might not turn out so shabby after all.
The next few days passed without incident. It was the nocturnal hours spent in the old house, however, that kept Chuck from the creature comfort of a single good night's sleep.
He would awake in the early hours of the morning, peering alertly into pitch darkness, his ears straining for the least little sound. He often thought he could hear the minute scrambling of thousands of tiny legs as they skittered somewhere beneath him. He could almost sense the movement en masse. But when he took his flashlight from the nightstand and shone it upon the floor beneath his bed, there would be nothing but shadow and dust bunnies. No milling multitude of venomous arachnids... only emptiness.
The following morning found him, with flashlight and insecticide, thoroughly searching the entire house, from attic to the cramped crawlspace of the foundation. As always, he found nothing. Rather than dispelling his suspicions, his fruitless inspections only caused the feeling of unease to grow even stronger.
He could not understand it. All the neighbors he had talked to had confirmed Aunt Millie's story. According to them, the little house had been hopelessly invaded by brown recluse spiders. Yet, he had found no evidence of there ever having been a single one in the vicinity. None of the tell-tale signs were revealed; tatters of old webbing, dried bugs who had fallen prey, not even a single, shriveled husk of a long-dead fiddleback.
Still, Chuck could not shake that unnerving sensation that they were there somewhere, luring just beyond the reach of prying eyes. Such a vast nest of the horrid pests could not have disappeared so completely and left no lingering trace at all.
The utilities were back on by Friday and, on Saturday morning, Chuck recruited some friends to help him move. A U-Haul and five trips transferred all his earthly belongings from the excessively expensive apartment to the drafty bungalow halfway across town.
They had most of the stuff unpacked and put away by nightfall and, during the hectic process, Chuck had mentioned several times for everyone to "watch out for spiders". It soon became an inside joke with the gang. One of the girls would let out a squeal and Chuck would come running with a fly-swatter and a can of spider spray. Everyone would break up laughing. Chuck didn't think it was so damned funny at first, but soon he joined in, feeling foolish and a little peeved at himself for being so nervous over a creature no larger than his thumb.
That night they had a party to celebrate Chuck's new residence. He pulled out all the stops and told his friends to cut loose and enjoy themselves. There was some coke and grass, plenty of booze, and, after hooking up the stereo system, they cranked up the volume and jammed to everything from Led Zepplin to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Chuck's blatant disregard for restraint was not so much directed at his new neighbors than it was directed at Aunt Millie herself. The rock & roll orgy was his final rebellion; thumbing his nose at her stifling, puritanical ways and her last-ditch effort to put him down with that silly story of wholesale spider infestation.
Chuck was half bombed and just starting to loosen up, when his girlfriend, Bonnie, let out a shriek and bounded off the couch, rubbing the back of her arm.
"What's the matter, sweetheart?" he asked in sudden, sober concern.
"I don't know," she pouted. "Felt like something bit me."
"Better break out the Raid, Chuck!" some joker yelled and started an uproar. Only Chuck and Bonnie didn't laugh. He examined the welt on her arm and found it red and inflamed. Almost instantly he knew exactly what had bitten her.
"Grab your jacket," he told her. "I'm taking you to the emergency room. You've got a bad spider bite there."
That brought a few giggles from the half-stoned crowd. "Oooh, there he goes with those freaking spiders again!" snorted his best friend, Ted Downes, who was taking a Metallica CD from its case.
Chuck's face grew livid with sudden rage. "Just shut the hell up, will you?" His words sent the whole group into stunned silence. "Listen up! This party is officially over. I'm taking Bonnie to the hospital and when I get back I want to see this place vacant... comprede?"
Everyone nodded and mumbled their agreement. "What about your bed?" asked Ted. "I thought we were gonna set it up for you tonight?"
"I'll get it myself tomorrow." Chuck had calmed down a little and felt like a complete ass for flying off the handle. "Really, I appreciate everyone's help today. It's just been a very tiring day for me with the move and all."
"Sure, man, we understand," assured Ted. "You go on and take your lady to the doctor. We'll stick around long enough to clean up and we'll lock the door when we leave."
Chuck offered an appreciative smile. "Thanks. We'll see you guys later."
Everyone sat in silence until they heard Chuck's Corvette pull out of the drive. "Now let's do some serious partying!" shouted Ted. He pushed the volume control to the limit and, with a girl on each arm, proceeded to open a fresh keg.
Chuck was in a foul mood when he returned home later that night. It was not because he found the place in worse shape than when he had left. He had expected as much from reliable ol' Ted. No, it was the hassle he had gone through at the hospital that lay heavily on his thoughts.
He had a hard time convincing the attending physician in the ER that Bonnie had been bitten by a brown recluse. "Are you absolutely sure?" the young doctor had asked. "Did you kill the spider? Did you even see it?" Chuck had answered no and, when the doctor first refused to treat the wound as a spider bite, he had nearly decked the guy, he was so keyed up.
Finally, Bonnie's injury had been treated as such and Chuck had driven her home. She had wanted to stay the night at his place, despite the possibility of another spider bite. After some heated discussion, Chuck had given in. He told her to come over around midnight. That would give him plenty of time to check out the house before she showed up, although he had a sinking feeling that he knew what he would find, or rather, not find when his search was complete.
The first thing he did when he got there was tear the cushions from the sofa and pull it away from the wall. He examined it thoroughly, but found nothing. In frustration and total disgust, he retired to the bedroom.
He lay in bed and watched television, waiting until the hour of twelve rolled around. The nightly news first, then an old Gunsmoke rerun. He was drifting off, when something caught his attention and made his heart pound in excitement. A tiny, star-shaped shadow darted across the TV screen, settled on Matt Dillon's face for a second, then disappeared into the dark border of the picture tube.
Chuck was up in a flash, the lights on, a rolled up TV Guide clutched in one hand. He crossed the floor to the set and searched it, front and back. He found no sign of the fleeting intruder. "Where are you, you little bastard?" he grumbled.
He pulled the TV stand away from the wall. There was a small crack in the baseboard, just large enough for a spider to squeeze through. His awful obsession came to a head at that moment, turning him a little crazy. He stepped into the hallway and found the toolbox he had brought to do some carpentry work. He took a claw hammer back into the bedroom with him and set to work.
After ten minutes, he finally ran out of steam and stared dumbly at his destructive handiwork. He had torn away the oaken baseboard along the bottom and battered several large craters in the plastered drywall. His violent mutilation had revealed only aged insulation and a few random mouse turds abandoned along the studs and crossbeams. And guess what? That's right. Not one freaking spider!
Chuck stumbled into the bathroom and downed a couple of Tylenol for his blinding headache. "Chill out, man," he told himself. "You're getting all worked up over nothing." He glared into the mirror and saw the face of a haunted man. I bet Aunt Millie is really getting a kick out of this. I bet she's laughing her ass off up there in the great hereafter. Well, screw you, dear auntie! This is my place now; lock, stock, and barrel. Your little head game with the spider story isn't going to work anymore. I'm here to stay, you old bitch, and there's nothing you can do about it!
Wearily, he prepared for bed. He stripped down and, naked, climbed into bed and switched off the nightstand lamp. He did not feel like waiting up for Bonnie any longer. She would likely wake him up at midnight anyway, with that wicked little way of hers. Not that he would feel much like accommodating her affections tonight. The day's activities had pretty much wasted him.
He sighed deeply and settled between the cool sheets, hoping that sleep would come soon. He had left the side window open. It was cool that night, but comfortably so. The sound of crickets and a southbound train lulled him into a light slumber.
Chuck was awakened abruptly an hour later when a spring poked him square in the lower back. "Damned mattress!" he rasped. He managed to find a more comfortable position, but not for long. Two more springs jutted upward, prodding him the left shoulder blade and right buttock. "Now what the hell is going on here?" he asked the darkness, then suddenly held his breath.
He could feel the mattress moving slightly beneath his weight, could sense something vibrant and alive stirring against his body, separated only by thin foam padding and cloth. Goosebumps prickled his naked flesh and he nearly cried out as the loud ripping of rotten mattress ticking echoed from beneath the bedcovers.
Almost afraid to move, Chuck reached for the flashlight that sat on the nightstand. He snapped on the light, lifted the covers, and, in horror, shone its beam at the foot of the bed.
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nbsp; A great gorge of writing, brown spiders spewed from the split in the old mattress. He wanted to scream, wanted to leap from the cool bed linen, but dared not. He dared not whimper a sound or move a muscle. He dropped the flashlight and endured the awful sensation of those tiny abominations as they danced across his ankles.
Like an incoming tide, the spiders advanced upon him in brown ripples, covering his legs, groin, the flat of his stomach. He could only lie there and shudder as they covered him completely, taking up every available inch of bare flesh, each one claiming its own private spot.
When the maddening tickle of tiny legs ceased to cross his skin, Chuck laid there in rigid suspense. What the hell are they doing? screamed his mind. In God's name, what are they waiting for?
A signal. That was what they were waiting for. When the last fiddleback had taken its proper place, the link was complete. As if on cue from some higher state of consciousness, they all began to bite, pumping every pore with the vile poison of their glands. Chuck's body lurched violently, racked in agony, his nervous system pierced by a thousand white-hot needles. But it was only for a second. The deadening effect of the venom acted fast, plunging him into merciful paralysis.
Then they were on the move once again. Scampering through his hair, invading every orifice of his body; his ears, his nasal passages, the gaping cave of his mouth, frozen in a final silent scream. They squeezed past the loosening muscles of his rectum and made a mad dash through the twisting maze of his bowels. A platoon of baby spiders entered the opening at the tip of his penis and traveled through the channel of the shaft, marching their way toward the warm nursery of his bladder.
Slowly, one by one, they began to settle into their newfound home.
The fleeting wash of headlights passed the bedroom window as a car pulled into the driveway outside. The suddenly glow revealed a picture hanging on the far wall... a picture that Chuck swore had not been hanging there before. It was the smug and self-righteous face of Aunt Millie. A faded black-and-white photograph wreathed in a squirming frame of brown recluse spiders.