9 Tales Told in the Dark 17

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  “Look, there’s some of that horrible web in the airing cupboard!” Janet told me one afternoon.

  “The damn things are making themselves at home,” I sighed. “I just don’t know what to do about them!”

  “Mrs Blake, two doors down, says she’s going to stay with her mother till her flat’s clear; she’s a real arachnophobe!”

  “Maybe the landlord will do something about it...”

  “Oh, I hope not!”

  “Sorry?”

  She laughed. “I mean, if they do, they’ll fumigate the whole place and we’ll have to move out. That’ll be a real pain.”

  “I guess so... But, if it got rid of them...”

  “Well, it’s not as if they’ve actually done anything.”

  “They don’t need to do anything – they just have to be!” I told her. “Do you know what Tommy Jones told me?” I asked after a moment’s silence, hoping to lighten the atmosphere.

  “Mary’s boy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “He was weaving quite the most melodramatic tale of a horrible half-man, half-spider living upstairs in the block.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. Apparently, it lurks on the ceiling of the passage waiting to drop down on hapless victims who enter the flat. He didn’t explain why anyone would actually be entering the flat...”

  “Well, if it’s half-human, maybe it can use the phone to call for a repairman or something,” she grinned.

  “I suppose so. ‘Come into my parlour’ and all that, eh?” I laughed. “Wouldn’t it be awful if there were spiders the size of people?”

  Janet shuddered. “I think I would be scared of spiders, then! Still, I read they can’t grow that big, really, so no need to worry.”

  “Yeah, just these ones to worry about,” I snapped, spotting another.

  Some days later, I answered a knock at the door and opened it to find our neighbours from down the passage, Jim Elliott, there.

  “Hi, Jim. You okay?” He looked agitated and kept scratching the back of his hand.

  “Yeah. You seen Mitzi?” Mitzi was his improbably-named little pug. Technically, we weren’t supposed to have pets, but the rules had never been strictly enforced. Besides, nobody was going to argue with Jim; he was a big, shaven-headed guy who looked like some sort of hell-raising biker rather than the gentle giant who doted on his tiny dog.

  “She’s gone walkabout?”

  “Yeah. Opened the door last night for my pizza and she just ran out. I was out all night looking for her and no luck. I thought maybe somebody’d have seen her or taken her in or something, but no luck.”

  “Sorry, haven’t seen her. I’ll keep my eyes peeled and let you know if I see or hear anything of her.”

  “Thanks, mate.”

  “What happened to your hand?” It was looking pretty inflamed and the scratching had started it bleeding a little.

  “Damn spider bit me,” he said, turning away to trudge disconsolately to the next flat along.

  I shut the door and went back into the lounge.

  “Who was it?” Janet asked, looking up from her documentary.

  “Jim from down the passage. Mitzi’s run away.”

  “Oh, dear. Poor guy must be upset!”

  “He looked pretty down.”

  “I hope Mitzi’s okay; she’s too pampered to make it as a stray. Have you noticed, there seem to be a lot of missing pets at the moment.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. Haven’t you noticed all the missing posters around? You hear of petnappers – you know, stealing valuable pedigree cats and dogs for ransom or for breeding, or taking animals for vivisection and training fighting dogs and stuff like that. It’s awful! There must be a gang in the area...”

  “Maybe... But, Mitzi just ran out the door, so I reckon she’ll turn up soon enough. Oh, and you know what else? The poor guy got bitten by a spider and his hand looks pretty nasty. I wonder if he has an allergy?” The general consensus was that the spiders weren’t poisonous.

  “Perhaps he could adopt the spider if she doesn’t come back!” she joked, before turning back to the television.

  Jim never did find Mitzi, as far as I know, and the next time I saw him, he was squatted in the corner of the car park. I assumed he was waiting there in the hope of spotting his missing pet. Later, I heard he’d been arrested for jumping out at Ella James and assaulting her; which was bizarre, as Jim had always been incredibly polite to women and a gentle soul. I couldn’t credit that he was some sort of rapist, especially when I heard the rumor that he’d tried to tear out her throat with his teeth; if true, he’d turned into an absolute madman. It was as it our lovely, quiet corner of the world had gone crazy.

  “The spiders are getting worse,” Janet said. “There was a whole swarm of them scuttling across the green this morning.”

  “Do spiders swarm? I thought they lived alone.”

  She shrugged. “These ones do. Maybe you need to tell them they’re getting it wrong.”

  “There seem to be more inside, too.”

  “One nearly bit me yesterday; and one dropped on me from a tree the day before.”

  “I’ve never seen so many,” I shook my head.

  “It’s probably global warming; they’re multiplying 'cos it’s getting warmer. Or, maybe, it’s chemicals: I read somewhere that a bunch of spiders in Mexico or someplace like that started swarming around because of pollution.”

  “You sure you aren’t thinking of that film where the chemical spill makes the spiders grow to gigantic proportions?”

  She laughed. “Possibly. Or, maybe, they’ve been genetically engineered by some dodgy corporation and got loose.”

  “Yeah, and they’re on the rampage to avenge themselves on us for what we’ve done to the planet.”

  She was suddenly serious. “But, you know, things have been pretty weird lately: all those pets disappearing and Jim turning out to be a psycho rapist. Maybe it really is something weird like chemicals? I’ve had a cold that just won’t shift and the old woman who lived in number ten died last week.”

  “Well, she was old, darling.”

  “Yeah, but still... I mean, there’s that scientist who says there’s a virus that can control our minds – cats are rife with it and something like half of us have it, too. Or, then, I was reading on the internet about chemtrails –”

  “What-trails?”

  “Chemtrails. Chemicals sprayed from aircraft. The government are supposed to spray them to control our minds and stuff.”

  “Sounds like a load of rubbish, to me.”

  “I dunno. Those vapor trails they leave aren’t supposed to last long, but some do – those are supposed to be chemtrails. There’s something in them that prevents them from just dissipating, so the chemicals drift over a wide area.”

  “Still sounds silly to me.”

  “Well, what about comets?”

  “Comets?”

  “Yeah, comets. I’ve read there’s been a lot of them buzzing the Earth recently and they can carry all sort of chemicals and even alien viruses that can get into the atmosphere... Nobody knows what effect they might be having on the planet.”

  “Sounds just as crazy to me. Next, you’ll be telling me that the Bilderbergers are behind it all.”

  “Well, you never know...”

  I had to laugh. “Nah, there’s probably a perfectly rational explanation.” Probably there was, but it didn’t do us much good.

  By the end of the summer, it was impossible to deny that something strange was going on with the spiders: we’d started to refer to it as ‘The Year of the Spiders’ as a joke, but it was becoming more of a nightmare. Even at the most basic level of just having them around, nightmare was the operative term: the damn things were becoming disturbingly common to the extent that there was almost always one on a wall or on the ceiling and sometimes several would be seen crawling around in shadowy corners. I felt permanently anxious to have
them around and Janet was getting pretty freaked out herself. Despite our best efforts with the duster, the thick sails of web kept appearing in the flat; the linen cupboard was thick with the stuff and it kept reappearing in the corners of all the rooms and behind the toilet.

  “Sam,” Janet said as she came in from work, “I...” Her voice trailed away and she looked down at the floor embarrassed.

  “What is it, honey?” I asked, exiting the kitchen where I’d been starting supper.

  “Well, as I was coming home, I... I could have sworn some... thing was following me...”

  “Following you?” I echoed, then my brain caught up with what she’d said. “Something?”

  “Yeah. I thought it was a person. But, well, when I looked back, I saw something... scuttle into the shadows. Something large and, well, definitely not human; too many limbs...”

  “A huge spider?” I asked, skeptically.

  “A huge spider-thing.” Her tone implied something out of my nightmares or children’s tall tales.

  “Very funny,” I told her.

  “I’m serious, Sam.”

  “Seriously nuts!”

  “Look, I’m not joking and I’m not crazy!”

  She certainly sounded serious. “Sure, but it does sound nuts. Well, I doubt you saw some gigantic spider or a chemical mutant or anything like that. Probably, you heard a noise and, what with everything, you just freaked out a little and your imagination ran riot. I can’t say I blame you!”

  “I guess so...”

  We left it at that. I thought it was all so much nonsense – until I saw just such a strange shadow, like something too large to be a spider and with too many limbs to be a man, yet sharing the traits of both. I told myself that it was just an illusion, but my nightmares grew much worse after that...

  I was startled by Janet’s sudden shriek from the bathroom. I rushed through to find her sobbing and clutching at her ankle.

  “What happened?” I asked, hugging her.

  “A spider bit me! Ow-ow-ow! It hurts like hell!”

  “Oh, darling!” I helped her through to the lounge.

  Janet was in agony and her ankle was swelling, so I fetched the car and parked outside the front entrance of the block, then helped her hobble out to the car and drove her up to the hospital. We’d had one confirmed death from a spider bite and even though it had been put down to an allergic reaction rather than any deadly poison, we were both panicking.

  “I’m scared, Sam!” she sobbed as I picked her up and carried her into the hospital.

  She was examined and given an injection for the reaction and some antibiotics as the doctor said spider bites could get infected.

  “It seems to be an allergic response,” he told us, “and not the direct effect of a toxin.” I hoped he was telling the truth, but it was the same thing we’d been told when Sally Jones died and I think we all had our doubts about that. But, he’d seemed very interested when he heard our address and had taken photos of the bite and written more notes than I would’ve expected.

  Still, Janet seemed rather better by the afternoon after having had her feet up for a while, even if I wasn’t too happy about the inflamed wound.

  “I’m seriously thinking we should move out till they’re gone,” I told Janet the next day, as I examined the still-inflamed bite. A couple more of our neighbours had left to stay with friends or family and one, a severe arachnophobe, had managed to get rehoused. The problem for most of us was that we had nowhere to go and couldn’t afford to relocate.

  “Well, I heard they’re planning to fumigate.”

  “They really couldn’t not, could they? Not now.” With a death and her severe reaction, which I’d already phoned through to our landlord, I was certain they would have to take action. In this age of ‘Health and Safety’, there was no way in which the issue could be ducked by our landlord or the council.

  “No, something has to be done!”

  Something was: there was a knock on the door that evening from a man in a suit who introduced himself as being from the council.

  “Given the situation, we will be fumigating all the blocks tomorrow. You will have to leave. Here is a letter with all the details.”

  He didn’t stop to answer questions, having the rest of the block to alert.

  The letter told us that we had to leave everything – to not even pack toiletries or a change of clothes – so I guess they were genuinely worried about the infestation being spread. It said we’d be picked up by a coach at a point about half-a-mile down the road and taken to our temporary housing and would receive a payment to cover our relocation costs, replacement clothes and the like that wouldn’t preclude a compensation payout, if necessary. As inconvenient as leaving everything behind would be, I was glad to be going...

  We left the next morning, stepping out into the cool autumn morning air first thing. Our neighbours were also leaving their homes, bleary-eyed and occasionally carrying the bags and cases we’d been instructed not to bring. Janet was still hobbling from the bite, but told me it was okay, except for the itch.

  “Just look at the web!” Janet exclaimed as we left.

  I’d noticed sheets of webbing amongst the plants on several balconies and even covering entire windows, but it was worse than ever with substantive spreads covering several balconies. There seemed to be even more than there had been the day before, and it had been impressive then. It seemed as if the spiders were determined to tent over entire buildings.

  “Oh, hell!” I exclaimed, barely able to get the words out and suddenly feeling as if I would wet myself. The webs were coming alive with spiders, swarming with them. They must have been hatching a new generation.

  “I knew we should have left already!” Janet exclaimed. Despite still hobbling, she began to move quickly, crying, “Come on!”

  We joined our neighbours in a panicked rush, the bags and cases suddenly abandoned, dropped to trip those behind. Some fell and one or two didn’t rise, being trampled. There were shouts and screams as people sought to avoid the spiders or found themselves swarmed and bitten.

  Those of us with the greatest fear led the way, desperate to evade the spiders, whether or not they were actually likely to be dangerous. I’m ashamed to say that I just left Janet behind and took my place at the head of the stampede.

  We ran to the designated spot where half-a-dozen coaches waited for us and scrambled aboard, desperate to leave our homes and their arachnid occupiers behind. I was grateful to see Janet was amongst those who arrived behind me; she was too distraught to complain at my abandonment.

  As the coaches climbed the hill that led to the city proper, I heard a voice call: “Look!” and turned to see what the excitement was. One of our neighbours was pointing back towards the blocks.

  “Dammit, will you look at that?” someone else exclaimed, also pointing. “What is it?”

  There were thousands of strands of white floating up into the air and lazily drifting in our direction on the soft morning breeze like a reverse-shower of gravity-defying snow. It was almost mesmerizing to behold and, for a moment, I couldn’t work out what it could be. Then, my mind slipped back to a documentary I’d once seen and an image of dozens of spiders taking to the air by tossing up strands of silk to catch the breeze; apparently they could travel miles on the wind that way. I shuddered at the sight as I realised the spiders would follow us into the city, that we had not truly escaped them after all.

  I wanted to imagine that they would disperse and go their separate ways when they landed, but I had a sick feeling they wouldn’t, that they would continue to swarm and cluster and spin their broad, ugly webs, then take once more to the air and spread yet further until their webs covered the entire city and perhaps even the entire country or even the world, assisted by shadowy, human-sized beings that had no right to exist outside of nightmares.

  I prayed that such fancies were madness and that the spiders could be controlled and that freakish spider-things just couldn’t exist
, but what I’d seen made them seem horribly plausible as we drove along trailing the aerial migrants in our wake.

  Beside me, Janet idly rubbed at her ankle, whilst gazing out of the window at the spiders with a strange half-smile on her lips.

  THE END.

  THE RIVER AND A KILLER by Adam Phillips

  Angel slid lower into the upturned collar of his wool coat, cursing the dead engine of his car, cursing The River Killer. If it weren't for the one, he'd be home right now, having one last drink and a bath before bed. If it weren't for the other, he could have cut along the river path right back to the party and flagged a ride.

  He'd been coming up the hill out of the industrial park, still a mile or so out of town, when all the lights on the dashboard had faded and the engine had rattled off into silence. No cell service, and practically equidistant between home and the party; an hour's walk either way.

  Unless he hopped the fence, through the woods and across the river. That would get him back to the party in fifteen minutes…

  But of course that hadn’t been a viable option for the last two years. Not since the killings had begun.

  Walking the wet deserted street between hardware stores and welding shops, Angel recalled the first murder. Quincy Knight. It had been big news at The Pearl. Angel had, in fact, been drinking and dancing with Quincy just a few nights before they'd found his body in the bushes along the water.

  And the state of the body…

  Angel wouldn’t have believed the story were it not for the testimony of Henry Quail, another Pearl regular who was also a state cop. The throat torn out and eyes removed. Chunks of flesh bitten from the torso, either carted away or eaten. The hands and feet cut off, presumably as trophies.

  While it had been officially unclear whether Quincy had been attacked at the river or abducted elsewhere, everyone at The Pearl had known, most of them first-hand, that the waterfront served as a nighttime meeting place for men who, for one reason or another, had to keep their relationship under wraps.