Spider Legs

by Piers Anthony

  Natalie tried to wedge her hands beneath the creature's leg to dislodge it. Nathan saw her grit her teeth; she should have had heavy gloves for this, because the surface was rough and spiked throughout.

  Meanwhile the motion across the deck continued. Now the boy's legs dangled over the ferry's side. One of his sneakers fell into the sea. Natalie and Nathan continued to pull at the boy while trying to avoid the creature's legs. Nathan wished he had the crowbar that had been lost in the sea.

  From out of the ocean appeared the pycno's proboscis. It was black and muscular like an elephant's trunk, except it was much bigger. It slowly made its way to the boy like a snake crawling toward its prey. Halfway from the end of the proboscis were two large death-bright eyes, which began to swivel in the direction of the boy. The beast hung there, half on the deck, much bigger than an African elephant—still, fierce, colossal.

  The pycno waited a moment in all its majesty, and then it slowly moved. When the proboscis was a foot from the boy's face, his screams became continuous. Then he just gave up, stopped screaming, as if he could scream no longer. His eyes bulged. He collapsed on the deck, as far as the leg's grip on him allowed. Other legs were closing in, forcing both Nathan and Natalie to let go of the boy and retreat, lest they suffer the same fate. The power of the monster seemed overwhelming.

  The proboscis stroked the boy's belly—then seemed to reach into it and started sucking on him. The boy let out a single shallow gasp. His fingers twitched, an involuntary nerve reaction. Green goo oozed from the sucking appendage, perhaps digestive enzymes, and poured out onto the boy and the deck of the ferry. The lidless, clear-glass eyes seemed to radiate hatred and hunger.

  More legs were rising from the deep. Some were small, others thicker than the trunk of an oak tree. The bigger ones had little claws on their ends. Natalie and Nathan charged in again and pounded on the proboscis, which started to withdraw from the boy's belly. But then it re-established its position and they saw it was sucking his organs and blood, eating him alive. The legs closed on them again, and again they had to retreat.

  “God almighty,” Natalie murmured, horrified. The pycno seemed totally unconcerned with all but the boy. It ignored the man and woman and continued to feed as if they were not there. The boy began to cough, and an ugly blue color began to spread to his cheeks.

  “Take this,” said Bill from the coffee shop as he handed Nathan a broken cola bottle. Nathan grabbed the bottle and tried to shove it into the pycnogonid's body, but the hard exoskeleton resisted all his efforts to puncture it.

  “Falow, where are you?” Natalie screamed. The tension was building to a crescendo. She touched the boy's face, but he did not move.

  “I have another idea,” Bill said as he ran back to the coffee shop. A minute later he came running back with a hot dog in his hand. He shoved it into one of the leg's pincers, and jumped quickly back. Maybe the hot dog would distract the sea spider from the boy, Bill evidently thought.

  The pincer squeezed the hot dog and brought it into the sea. For a moment the proboscis withdrew from the boy's belly and quested for the hot dog. The spider wasn't well coordinated, with the snout seeming not quite to know what the pincer was doing.

  As the proboscis left the boy, a loose slew of the boy's intestines spilled from the hole in his belly. The boy's face was ghastly with its colorless lips and waxen skin.

  Unfortunately, the creature soon figured things out, swallowed the hot dog in an instant—and immediately went back to feeding on the boy. Natalie approached again and touched the boy's neck, attempting to find a pulse. The boy seemed sunk in a deep level of unconsciousness and did not react to either Natalie or the pycno. He was limp, every muscle unresponsive.

  “There is a pulse,” Natalie said as the legs drove her back again. “I think his heart is oscillating strangely and occasionally exhibiting severe tachycardia.”

  “What?” Nathan asked.

  She almost smiled. “Sorry. I mean it's beating excessively rapidly. It's a bad sign.”

  “Because his guts are being consumed,” Nathan said. “And we can't do a thing about it. I hate this!”

  “Here, tie this to his body so he can't be pulled off the deck into the ocean,” yelled Bill. He handed Natalie a half-inch, hawser-laid nylon rope with a breaking strength of one thousand pounds.

  Falow came out of the coffee shop and when he saw what was happening he started to run. He grabbed a nearby chair and flung it across the deck at the pycno. The shattered pieces of the chair fell to the floor: instant junk.

  Other legs began to rise from the sea and to grab at Natalie and Nathan, so they retreated farther from the boy and dropped to their hands and knees.

  Falow pondered a moment, watching one of the spider legs spasm, then ran to within six feet of the creature. He had his gun. The spider did not have an instinctive fear of the man or the gun, but it was evidently capable of cold caution in these unusual circumstances. Perhaps it remembered the sound the gun made and the pain it had caused. Maybe, Nathan thought, its bowels undulated nervously within its body and legs as it prepared to finish imbibing the boy.

  Meanwhile the boy seemed in a coma as deep as the ocean. Nathan saw his body shuddering with the force of its own heartbeat. His heart rate might have risen to over two hundred beats per minute.

  “Get away,” Falow shouted to Nathan and Natalie who still crawled along the deck. Falow then fired at the pycno and probably hit a ventral ganglion. As a result, nervous information to and from the spider's fourth walking leg was halted. The creature's leg hung limply at its side.

  “Got you,” Falow cried, his voice rising with the increased pounding of his heart.

  “Score one for the home team,” Natalie muttered.

  The boy's body remained on the deck. The boy was not yet dead. His arms moved and his blood dripped like raindrops onto the wet floor. Sometimes his eyes rolled back into his head, as if he were having convulsions, but these episodes were now interspersed with near lucidity. A low moan escaped from his barely moving mouth. His gaze met Nathan's and had a pleading look. Then his deep-set eyes dilated in sudden pain as more of his intestines were yanked from his body by a spike in the creature's leg.

  Bill then grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it at the proboscis eyes, and the creature immediately responded. Its leg shot out at the rail, tearing it off as the proboscis lifted the boy into the air, broke the nylon rope, and tossed him into the sea. There was a dull snapping sound as the boy hit the water. He was probably still conscious as his broken body floated on the cold ocean waves.

  Nathan saw the boy's eyes look at him, cold blue eyes barely alive, bleak with the pain of dying. A few snowflakes frosted his eyelashes. This was no longer a carefree musical teenager; this was a person who had aged a lifetime in a few awful minutes. Suddenly he fell forward into the swelling waves, swallowing a mouthful of salt water so cold that it might have made his tongue ache. His face was shriveled, the skin of his fingers blanched of all color. Deep water, impenetrable as ink, stretched all around him, with no possible escape. He seemed to struggle for a second and Nathan noticed three pale gray slugs as big as men undulating toward him. Their mouths were full of needle-like teeth that quivered like quills on a porcupine. A moment later he was dragged beneath the water.

  Nathan turned away, his own eyes wild and searching. He felt a lump in his throat that presaged considerable emotional turmoil to come. Then his eyes met Natalie's, and he realized that she was near tears as surely as lightning bugs were a sign of approaching dusk.

  But Natalie could not afford to go into emotional retreat now, any more than he could. She was looking for Falow. When her eyes finally met Falow's, Nathan could see that they were radiating both anger and despair. “Where where you?” she screamed at him, as if she were the chief and he a deputy. Nathan hadn't seen this side of her before, but he understood her anger. If Falow had been there when the pycno first grabbed for the boy, they might have saved him.

&
nbsp; Indeed, Falow recognized his error. “I was in the bathroom, didn't hear what was happening—” He was cut off by a splashing sound in the sea. It was the pycno.

  From high above on the bridge, Captain Calamari shone a bright spotlight into the pycno's eyes, trying to further blind it. The deck below smelled of death.

  “Look at its eyes,” Calamari whispered. Anyone who cared to look over the deck saw the furious reddened orbs of the pycno peering out from inflamed, irritated sockets. Falow shot a few more times. They were good shots, considering the fact that Falow had a bad angle leaning against a table and was firing at shadows which moved against a bright background. Brains number two and four were soon destroyed by the gunfire.

  For a moment, the beast seemed as if it were paralyzed and unable to move its great mass. However, within a minute ganglion seven evidently took over, and the spider began treading water again. Its motions were more jerky. It began to submerge like a submarine.

  A deep cry came from Falow's mouth. “If we ever survive this, I'm going to kill that son of a bitch, no matter where it tries to hide.” The anger and despair seemed out of place on Falow's face, like a splattering of ink on a Mondrian painting.

  Captain Calamari was on the radio to the Coast Guard. “Get out here now!” he screamed into the microphone. Rain started to fall from the sky, streaking through the floodlit section like sugar threads from a cotton candy machine.

  “What is your position now?” said a voice on the radio. Before Calamari could respond, Nathan looked to his left and saw the pycno rear up on its posterior legs, catch hold of the boat, and begin to climb up to the bridge. As he watched, he caught a whiff of the fragrant melange of blood and ammonia. When the creature came to the smooth metal surfaces of a tower, it hauled itself up with the agility of a spider. Its legs were near the ferry's antennas as it pawed obscenely at the metallic projections.

  Nathan saw a black bird take off from a small nest on the antenna. He saw Falow shoot the creature again. It backed up, mashed the antennas, taking with it a guidance computer for the ferry's engine, and fell into the sea again. The black bird's nest floated on the waves, but there was no sign of the pycno.

  “Newfoundland Coast Guard!” Calamari shouted into the microphone. “Do you read me?” There was just static. All communications with the mainland were cut off as a result of the absent antenna. He paused for a second, as if hesitant about speaking his next thought. He replaced the microphone in its holder, surely dismayed at the prospect of guiding a ship with no communication. He tried to start the engine, but could not get it to respond. He looked to his left and saw a pipe from the engine belching blue smoke and roaring like an old lawnmower. He probably couldn't get over the obsessive sense of everything going wrong. Nathan understood perfectly.

  Nathan slumped with Natalie against a chair on the deck and noticed a piece of paper by the rail. At first he simply rolled his hands into fists and placed them on his hips, ignoring the paper. But he kept thinking that something was peculiar about it. It was wet with sea water and didn't seem to have been there before the pycno arrived.

  Then Falow walked over to the paper, picked it up, and read the words to them all:

  THE AVERAGE HUMAN ESOPHAGUS IS 10 INCHES IN LENGTH.

  CHAPTER 32

  Siege

  THE SEA HAD become a black meringue of foam and froth. Occasional waves vaulted over the ferry's sides and crashed down on the deck with a shattering force. Whoosh. A swirl of gray fog curled up along the outsides of the ferry's coffee shop windows like an old cat. The mood inside was tense. A five-year-old boy and his mother joined Natalie, Bryan, and Bill. She introduced herself as Brenda.

  Bryan stood up, stretched his big body, and put his hands together making a tent of strong, hairy fingers. Bill looked out the windows, his large eyes filled with fear. In order to distract the little boy from the scary atmosphere around them, Brenda, his mother, brought out beautifully crafted wooden jigsaw puzzles and placed them on the Formica counter.

  “Want to put together the Mickey Mouse puzzle or the Star Wars puzzle?” Brenda asked him with forced cheer. She was in her late twenties, a quiet woman, with smoke-blue eyes that tilted catlike. She had surely been quite striking a few years back, but now her ample bosom was becoming matched by a solidifying body.

  “StarWars,” the boy replied as he clutched a tiny, ragged blanket. His eyes were enormous as he watched his mother dig through an assortment of toys in her large pocketbook. Their small white poodle snuggled up to the boy with affection.

  The lumberjack had finished his greasy meal and tossed the aluminum dish into the garbage. “How about a beer?” he said to Bill. Bill smiled and pointed to an old sign on the wall. It read:

  ABSOLUTELY NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES SERVED!

  “No exceptions, even now?” Bryan leaned his big arms on the oatmeal-colored chair. He looked around, perhaps belatedly noticing how the recent deaths weighed heavily upon the passengers.

  “I'd be happy to make an exception now,” Bill said. “But we don't have anything except soda and orange juice. Try this.” He handed Bryan a cola. Bryan popped it open, tilted his head back, and took a swig. Then Bryan walked over to the window and gazed outside. There was no sign of the spider. Outside the moon was like a lacing of quartz on the black-velvet sea. He began to pace back and forth.

  “I'll take an orange juice,” Natalie said, as she handed the boy a dollar bill. He went to the refrigerator and poured a drink.

  “It's on me,” he told Natalie. “No charge today.”

  “We can't just sit here and do nothing,” Bryan suddenly yelled. He pushed a coffee cup blindly to the side. It fell off the counter and shattered on the hard vinyl floor.

  “We're waiting for the Coast Guard to come,” Natalie said. “It should be here soon. Try to stay calm.”

  “If I were any calmer, I'd be in a body bag,” Bryan said. Natalie winced; all they needed now was a hysterical lumberjack!

  “Our engine's dead,” Bill said. Natalie cast the boy a look that said, Why did you have to say that? Bill began to fill a water cooler with a plastic jug labelled FRESHWATER.

  “I know that,” Bryan said, facing the boy but not looking directly at him. “The engine's dead. But Captain Calamari mentioned that the ship had something called a radio direction finder. Maybe that helps.” Natalie did not tell him that the radio direction finder was used to help the ferry determine its own position at sea rather than for the Coast Guard to find the ferry.

  A shy looking Inuit woman came into the coffee shop and sat by herself, away from the others, in the corner of the room. She never said a word as she looked outside the coffee shop windows.

  “Actually, I think we could all use a little coffee,” Bill said.

  “Good idea,” Natalie agreed quickly. Anything to break up the mood of apprehension and gloom.

  Bill brewed a pot of coffee, and soon the delicious aroma filled the air. It had a tranquilizing effect on the passengers, taking away some of the horror of the night.

  Suddenly from the bathroom at the side of the coffee shop came a muffled cry. Natalie's heart skipped a beat. But then she reluctantly walked to the bathroom door. At first she knocked on the dried-up wallpaper which covered the door. As she knocked, the wallpaper curled itself away from the door's metallic surface.

  “Anyone in there?” Natalie said, as her hand rose to her quivering neck. The door slowly opened. From inside came a gust of hot, oily-smelling air.

  “Smells like a pack of skunks,” Bill whispered.

  The bathroom began to exude a smell of disinfectant that could not mask a melange of putrid biological odors. For a moment, Natalie didn't see anything in the shadows. The place was eerie and damp. It reminded her of the pendulum pit of Edgar Allan Poe. Brenda's poodle started to growl.

  As her eyes adjusted to the dim light Natalie saw movement. A shadow, perhaps a leg or arm. She found it easy to imagine that the shadows on the walls moved like tarantulas whic
h dripped poison from their fangs. Then from within the dark interior emerged a long hand with fingers all the same length, except for the ring finger, which was a good seven inches in length. They all had large bile-green nails at their tips. “Elmo!” she exclaimed. “What happened to you? You gave me a scare.”

  “Sorry, I got stuck in there,” Elmo said. “I'm still pretty weak. The stench didn't help.”

  Indeed it didn't. The skunk smell followed him like a cloud of pestilence. Bryan cried out in disgust. Brenda looked bewildered. The little boy looked as if he were about to say something naughty, but caught his mother's warning look and didn't.

  But Elmo merely smiled and went to rejoin Lisa. Natalie was surprised at how good-natured he was, considering the discomfort he was in. Was it an act? Did Elmo and his sister Martha suppress an anger which would one day explode in a fit of sudden fury or in a warped act of revenge? Martha, perhaps, but she had seen too much of Elmo's courage in adversity to believe that he had any such problem.

  Natalie returned to the counter, along with Bryan, Brenda, and her five-year-old. The child had finished the Star Wars puzzle and started the Mickey Mouse one. Brenda brought out The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss and an old-fashioned kaleidoscope to keep her son occupied after the puzzle was finished.

  “Could I have a cookie, Mom?”

  “Sure.” Brenda handed her son a bag of Oreo cookies, from which he withdrew two. The boy carefully separated the chocolate wafers and licked at the white icing. “Good,” he said as the sweet icing dissolved on his tongue.

  Without a warning, Bryan withdrew a steak-knife from his pocket and threw it across the coffee shop at the wall. It landed precisely on a large stag beetle that was crawling along the white woodwork of one of the windows. The knife protruded from the black beetle's back like a skewer in shish kebab.