by Douglas Draa
Yes. Skerritt owed Vinnie his life. For better or for worse.
“It’s like a nest, this place,” complained Karram.
Into the silence came the slang of a metal-throated bell. Karram sprinted round the corner. “I’ve found something,” he shouted.
The temple stood in a courtyard, rising high above the surrounding building, with eight floor of descending breadth, a simple timber building with a shingle roof, the only decoration being two ancient metal spiders, larger than a man at flanking the open gateway.
“It’s a spider temple,” said Karram.
“You don’t say,” said Vinnie.
Light shone from the temple’s windows. The voice of the temple bell was like an invitation into the cold night.
“Who would worship spiders?” asked Skerritt.
“Let’s go inside and see,” suggested Vinnie.
A stone-grey spider idol, crouched in the back of the room. Tall as ten men. Its outstretched legs touched the walls. Its head was studded with gemstones the size of skulls which gleamed in the light, from the lanterns decorated with eight-legged characters, strung on wires, hung low. The spider’s face was a disquieting merging of the human and the arachnoid.
“Savages,” said Vinnie. “Mixing beasts, even insects, with people and calling them gods.”
“There is only the Weatherman,” said Karram piously.
“You got that right.”
A woman emerged from the stone spider. She placed her palms together and inclined her head. “Welcome, my friends. How can I serve you?” Skerritt stepped back into the shadows.
“Who are you, miss?” said Vinnie.
“I am Ash-lan, servant of the spider,” replied the woman. She was very beautiful, dressed in a loose fitting black robe that to Skerritt was more alluring than the scanty costume of the dancing girls. Her hair hung like silk over one shoulder.
“We want to see the spider,” said Vinnie. He laughed as if he’d made a witty reply.
The priestess nodded. “She will help you. Which one of you is suffering?”
“Say what now?” Vinnie flicked a paper lantern and set the string of lights swaying.
“Which one of you is suffering from a skin ailment caused by the spider’s children. I will draw water from the spider well and give you the holy ash.” The priestess squinted slightly as she looked towards Skerritt. “I see, now.” She smiled. “Come. Don’t be afraid. She will heal you.”
Vinnie laughed. “His scars weren’t caused by a spider bite, miss. I think you misunderstood what we want from you.”
Where do loyalties lie? How far can they be stretched? In a moment of premonition, Skerritt knew that this night would be the woman’s last. He’d seen that look of hatred on Vinnie’s face before: when Vinnie held the body of his dead brother in his arms, cut to ribbons by an enemy blade. Vinnie had screamed a vow of revenge to the Weatherman, with that same look of hatred. Skerritt had never thought of himself as a coward. He’d known fear. What soldier hadn’t? But he’d always done the right thing. But in the spider temple of swaying shadows and monstrous stone idols his soul seemed to shrivel as he realised that he was not the man he thought he was.
Skerritt watched as Vinnie and Karram advanced towards the priestess.
“No!” she said, finally discerning their intentions. “This is a holy place.”
Vinnie back-handed her, and she fell to the floor. “I told you that you’d get yours,” he said to Karram with a wink.
“Stop.” Another figure emerged from the stone spider. A young man. His elaborate uniform was partially unlaced, revealing his chest.
“Hey. Now I see someone was here before us,” said Vinnie with a laugh. “Back off, son.”
The priestess glanced at the man and shook her head.
Ignoring her, the man charged towards them, his long sword held high above his head.
It only took a moment for Vinnie to shoot him through the throat.
The priestess screamed. She crawled across the floor to the dead man’s body. She gathered him in her arms, started singing a low, amusical sound of mourning.
“C’mon,” said Skerritt. “Let’s get out of here.”
“We haven’t got one we came for,” said Vinnie, taking a step towards the priestess.
She grabbed the man’s sword and scrambled to her feet half running half falling she stood below the stone spider, swinging the sword from hand to hand.
“I’ll say this for them, they’re fighters,” said Vinnie. He raised his gun. “Put the knife down, girl.”
“No.” She grasped the sword with both hands and slid it across her throat. Skerritt watch her skin opening like the unfolding of a petal, before the explosion of arterial blood. The priestess fell to her knees then fell face-forward onto the floor. Her blood forming a pool running to the feet on the stone spider.
“What the?” said Vinnie.
“We only wanted to…” whispered Karram.
* * * *
A causality of war that was all. She wasn’t the first, and she wouldn’t be the last. It was a pity really. A waste.
“I’ll take you to the village,” said Skerritt to the woman. He was a good man He’d saved her and her child from death. He was a good man.
She bent to the bundle in her arms and crooned a song to her baby.
Her silence was beginning to irritate Skerritt. It was as if he was nothing. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” he asked roughly.
The sound of her song changed. Her voice was a screech.
“Stop that,” said Skerritt.
She raised her face towards him. Her multifaceted eyes. Insistent. Breaking Skerritt out of the lies.
“My temple.” Her arms were wires emerging from the silk of her dress.
“We didn’t kill her,” said Skerritt. The Jeep was small, and she was so large, so old, her legs, her eyes, her fangs. Outside the snow, the cold blank snow, a half-eye on the road, Skerritt saw another loop in the track.
“My daughter.”
Her multifaceted eyes: insistent. Her face drawing close. The venom dripping from her fangs.
* * * *
“Look at the blood,” said Karram.
The blood that had pooled at the statue’s feet was absorbing into the stone. The leg of the spider was covered with a red web, like the capillaries of a living body. It spread quickly. They heard a cracking noise, like the breaking of stone.
“Let’s go,” shouted Vinnie.
Skerritt reached the door first. He fumbled at the handle. “It’s locked.”
“Shoot off the damn lock,” said Vinnie.
Skerritt took out his pistol. He glanced behind him. Flakes of stone were falling off the statue, revealing something black, organic, moving.
“Shoot the damn lock,” screamed Vinnie.
The bullet ricocheted off the metal.
“Try again.”
Stone fragments exploded. They coughed as the powder filled their lung. The temple was full of chittering sound: the rubbing of its mandibles.
“Try again,” shouted Karram.
From the corner of his eye, Skerrit saw the whip-fast hook of a leg. A scream.
Skerritt shot the lock open.
* * * *
And you’re running through the snow. Running. Running. Leaving Vinnie and Karram behind. Listening to the click of the legs skittling over the roofs. Running to the encampment. Grabbing the Jeep and plunging into the snow storm. Getting far, far away from that thing, from that spider thing, from the things that it did to Vinnie and Karram. Pretend it didn’t happen. Seal your mind, cold and clean and blank, or go crazy.
Crazy. You’re in the Spider Goddess Mountains, running from her.
* * * *
“My children” she says.
Her dress falls
open. Her legs unwind. Her bundle is a mess of eggs. Skerritt screams, and the Jeep spins out of control. He’s falling, falling, and the spider wraps her legs around him: thin, spindle-haired, grotesque.
* * * *
In the gully. Immobile in the web. Outside the broken window, the snow is cold and pristine and blank. Quiet, so very, very quiet. Skerritt wonders if the cold will get to him first, but then he hears the tiny sound of the eggs tearing open, and feels the first, tentative movements of the spiderlings.
▲
CLAY BABY, by Jack Lee Taylor
She set her tiny baby down on the kitchen table. Her baby still had no face, so she gently pushed in two slits into its clay, purple head with her fingernail until she saw the vestige of a smile. She added two more curved slits above the smile for eyes that appeared shut tight, full of glee.
She moved her baby onto a spot on the table where fading sunlight shone so she could study her work. It didn’t exactly look like a baby; its shape was amorphous, a purple ghost-like thing perched above two crude flattened slabs of clay as a kind of pedestal. Her creation certainly wasn’t anything comparable to the remarkable clay creatures her husband made in his studio down in the basement.
But it’s cute, she thought. And it’s my first work. My first child.
She picked up her baby from the table and then headed down the hallway until she came to a door splotched ornately with intricate designs made of clay. Above the door was a bulbous light bulb protruding out like a threatening fist. Seeing that it did not glow angry red, she opened the door and descended down creaking, boarded steps, cradling her baby in her arms. Her husband’s cursing grew louder with each step down into the cold, dusty basement.
“I did not call for you,” her husband said, not turning from his latest work to look at her. He hunched over a menagerie of several clay animals set across a large flat board full of realistic jungle terrain. Were it not for the pair of spotlights set upon the small animals, they would all blend with the countless clay things scattered around the concrete-bricked room, all of these creatures made from her husband’s previous claymation films.
“I have something to show you,” she said, stepping closer behind him. She held out her baby, cupping it in her hands. Her husband raised a finger, his back to her.
“I’m busy,” he said. “You know this.” She frowned, pulling her baby toward her.
“The light was not on,” she said.
Her husband ignored her. Instead, he stood up and headed over to a camcorder perched on a tripod next to a blazing spotlight. He pushed a button on the camcorder and then crossed his arms, eyeing his miniature stage, his white hair and glasses gleaming next to the spotlight.
The clay animals all sprung simultaneously to life: a lion chasing a gazelle, an elephant herd tromping through the ground, exotic birds flying through the air, giraffes grazing in the distance and many more animals in their own activities. It all looked so random, unorganized. And that’s what made it all look so real.
“Bah,” her husband grumbled. His animals stopped moving, his birds plopping back onto the board.
“That was wonderful,” she said.
“No,” he said. “They are clumsy.” He removed his glasses and pushed a palm into his eyes. He let out an exhausted sigh and said, “I am getting too weak. Too old for this.”
“No dear,” she said, coming closer to him and placing a hand on his shoulder. “You mustn’t say that. You are an amazing man! A brilliant artist!”
He scowled at her, putting his glasses back on. He pointed an accusing finger at her, “You would know this. All that I’ve done for you. You know this well!”
He paused, calming himself. “What are you holding?” he asked with annoyance.
She showed her baby to her husband, bringing the purple child just under the spotlights so he could see her first work.
“What is that?”
“It’s our baby.”
Her husband chortled and then laughed hard, his chest heaving.
“That?” he said in between laughs. “You made that?”
She stepped back, confused. She waited for his laughter to die and then said, “I know I could never be as good as you. But… it’s my first work. Our first baby. Would you make our baby move like you do the animals?”
Her husband frowned, shaking his head. “No. Don’t you realize how hard it is to control?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. They stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then her husband turned back to his work.
She moved away back toward the stairs and looked down at her baby’s face. Its smile was still there. I am forbidden to use, she thought. But maybe this one time…
She pulled at the familiar vibration from her husband, the stirring power she could always feel linking him to her. She pushed the vibrations from within her down into her child. The smiling divot on her baby’s mouth began to move.
“Mom-ma,” her baby said. The room began to shake, clay figures falling from shelves.
“NO!” her husband cried. “Stop using!”
“I…” she began and then felt the vibration grow stronger—uncontrollable. She couldn’t stop this. Her husband screamed, staggering toward her, his palms to the sides of his head. “YOU MUST STOP!”
Her baby began to lose its shape. NO! MY BABY!
Something suddenly shifted inside of her and then she felt herself… what? Shrink? He’s taking it away from me!
“I warned you,” her husband said, panting. “You must never use my power.”
Her arms drew into her body, her torso expanding and ripping the buttons from her dress.
“I should never have created you,” he said. “You… you use up too much of the energy.”
She tried to reach out to her husband, but her arms were now just nubs of clay. Her head tucked down into her neck; her legs puddled boneless to the ground.
Darkness formed around her vision, but she spotted her baby, malformed and still on the ground next to her. With a last pull from her husband’s energy, she reached out with a snaking piece of her and bonded with her baby, reeling her child toward her. Into her.
For the moment just before she was unmade, she felt a sense of joy and wonder.
She was a mother.
A mother with child.
▲
THE CORPSE AND THE RAT: A STORY OF FRIENDSHIP, by Joshua L Hood
A corpse slid into the river. Rain plipped off its milky white eyes, its blue and splotchy lips, its porcelain skin. Mud diluted into brown water and sank away from it, down to the bottom of the river. More mud from the gentle slope trailed behind its feet, in no hurry to get anywhere, marking the languid progress of the corpse’s last journey.
This corpse was miles from anyone or anywhere it used to call important. This corpse had made a good run when it was still alive, and so it lived a little longer, albeit alone—as alone as it was now, not enjoying a gentle float down a gentle river on a not sunny day.
The heat made the corpse sweat, in a way. Despite the dark red sky, there was no respite from the sticky warmth. It radiated from everything, but the water brought a little coolness, which would have been nice.
A rusty culvert glided by overhead. Where once it gushed, now it dripped. What was once runoff water, some industrial slurry, was now a vestigial trickle of sludge, rust stained red like the sky. It traced a stuttering path along the body like Jackson Pollack’s first dribble onto canvas. The red slid down the arch of the nose and rimmed the milky white eyes.
Suddenly the whole body shuddered and bobbed in the current. At the last minute, sensing an opportunity slipping away, a rat the size of yesterday’s housecat lunged from the drooling pipe and lit on the corpse’s swollen belly. It growled a sound like gravel grinding in a clenched fist. Triumph. It squinted into the orange-tinted distance where the white glass r
iverbank reflected the dull sky too brightly for eyes that had been used to the drain pipes and crawlspaces of the crumbling factory. They saw, the first eyes to see, what remained of the world, and if it had known well enough the rat would have shook its head and gone back to its dark corridors.
Instead, it studied the scene like an astronaut first arriving on a desert planet—its beauty only perceptible because its cruelty had no comparison. All the same, if a rat could assume, and maybe this one could, it would have assumed that the world had always been this way, and wondered what the big fuss was all about. It was pretty though.
As the corpse floated along it began to pass familiar things. A boat dock that had been spared the fires by its convenient location. A parking lot where the cars had been realigned from neatly ordered rows into a jumble of confusion that would have rationalized itself into an outward spiral, radiating from a smoldering crater, if it could have been seen from above. It slowly began to pass other corpses, those slightly slower than it had been, who’d died a few moments sooner. They were up higher on the river bank, too far to be washed down into the flow by the burning rain.
A current took the corpse’s arm and swept it outward as though reaching out to touch its fellows, falling short by just a few dozen yards. The rat flinched to see its raft move so. It scrutinized the vacant face and maybe realized, by the two eyes and mouth and nose, that this thing had once been a living thing like itself. It may have understood the concept of comradery, but if it did, didn’t linger on the thought. Instead, it was distracted by a sudden compulsion. It realized then that it was standing on meat—edible meat—and rent a chunk of flesh from directly beneath where it stood. It chewed dreamily.
Concrete boulders with a few right angles and many jagged edges stretched into the distance as the parts of a city that had only partly collapsed drifted away behind them. The rat curled into the nape of the corpse’s neck, nuzzling its chin with its head, letting the water lap against its grubby toes. It didn’t sleep, but watched with a danger-wary eye that had become a genetic necessity amongst its kind. A fish leapt not far off. The rat didn’t move, but followed the ripples with its gaze as they broke over the bent rim of a bicycle lodged part way into the muddy bank. Glassy crystals burned into the mud sparkled with the disturbance, then went back to their dull gleams. The fish jumped again—as though following the corpse.
