by Amy Cross
I stare at him. As far as I can tell, there's only one strange creature here right now, and it's the one holding the torch. "I'll take the risk," I say.
"If I say run," he continues, "you must -"
"I'll run," I say, interrupting. "I promise. We're in your territory now. I bow to your knowledge."
"Good," he says, turning and walking along the passageway. "I'm glad you're not too arrogant to accept help."
I set off after him, feeling pretty silly. Sure, he's managed to find some underground tunnel that leads a few hundred meters underground, but that doesn't mean he genuinely knows anything about monsters and ghosts. This is probably part of the old mine system that was built more than a century ago around the outskirts of Dedston. Max is certainly very theatrical, I'll give him that; but at some point, all this build-up is going to have to come to an end when he accepts he's got no monsters to show me. I feel pretty sorry for him, and I'm worried about the implications for his mental health when he's finally faced with the fact that he's completely wrong. But for now, I'll follow him. After all, I've still got a story to write.
Todd
Suddenly I wake up, vomiting water and rolling onto my side. It feels like my lungs are about to burst, and my head's throbbing. I pause to catch my breath, and then I vomit more water. And more. There's so much dirty, muddy water inside me, it feels like I'll never be able to get it out. Finally, however, I try to vomit and there's nothing left, and I find myself panting for breath on the stone walkway that runs along the side of the underground river.
I survived. Somehow I survived. I turn and -
Patrick's sitting nearby. He's on the floor, with his back leaning against the wall of the tunnel and his knees drawn up. He's staring straight ahead, but it's clear that not only was he the one who saved me, but he's also waiting around to see if I'm okay.
I stare at him.
He doesn't look over.
I'm terrified, but I feel as if I have to talk to him.
"Is this your house?" I ask.
There's a pause, and then he turns and stares straight at me. There's something very strange and deep about his eyes, as if he's looking directly into my soul. I want to look away, but I find I can't do anything other than stare back at him.
"Do you ever talk?" I ask. "I mean..." I wait for a moment, not sure what to say. "Is this underground place your bedroom?"
For what seems like forever, he just stares at me. But then, finally, he smiles. Just a small smile, but more than I ever expected.
I sit up, and I realize that my chest feels really sore. "Thanks for saving me," I say. "I thought I was going to..." I stop speaking. Patrick's a vampire. He's probably met millions of people, so I guess I'm not very interesting. "I'm sorry I came into your house without asking," I say, "but I'm looking for my sister. Her name's Sophie. Is she here?"
He stops smiling, as if Sophie's name troubles him.
"I know you don't talk much," I continue, "but can you just tell me where she is? She hasn't been home for ages and I'm starting to get worried." I wait for him to respond, but he doesn't say anything. He just stands there. "That's all I want," I say eventually. "I just want my sister back." With no better idea, I pull out my notebook and start looking through the pages. I prepared for almost any possible eventuality, but the one thing I didn't think about was that maybe I'd end up face to face with Patrick like this.
"The last time I saw her," I say, deciding to just keep talking and hope that I get a better idea, "was just after she came back from the place she was put when she went mad. She just came home to get some clothes, and then she went out and she's been gone ever since. I think I heard her coming home one night, but I'm not sure. My Mom doesn't seem to have even noticed, but I want her to come home."
Slowly, Patrick gets to his feet and starts walking away from me, heading along the tunnel.
"Hey!" I shout.
He doesn't respond.
"Come back!" I call after him. I look around and realize that I'm not sure which way to go if I want to get out of here. "Don't leave me here!" I shout.
Patrick stops, turns and reaches out a hand. He waves for me to follow him, and then he turns and keeps walking. I watch his back for a moment, and then finally I run to catch up with him. I don't know if I can trust him, or if he's dangerous, but I'm worried about getting trapped down here so I figure I need to stick with him for now, at least. Anyway, he might even be able to lead me to Sophie. I'm not convinced that Patrick's completely evil. Sophie seemed to like him, at least at first.
Eventually we reach a large hall. It's like someone has built the inside of a ballroom down at the bottom of a cave. The place is lit up by thousands of candles, and the underground river flows into a small round lake in the center The walls are covered with old paintings, and there are pieces of really old furniture all around the sides of the room. At school one time, we saw photos of the inside of old French palaces, where the Kings and Queens of France would entertain their visitors during the eighteenth century. That's what this place is like. Everything about it looks old.
When I look up, I see that the ceiling is covered with a huge painting that shows big white clouds against a bright blue sky, with angels dancing. It's a painting like you'd see in a history book, and it must be hundreds of years old. In the center of the room, there's a large metal chandelier with no lights, suspended from the ceiling by a huge chain. It takes me a moment before I realize that the chandelier and the chain are both made completely out of human bones. Looking around, I see that there are bones everywhere: piled up in the corner, tossed aside, left on the furniture. I look down and see that the tiled floor is stained red with old blood.
When he reaches the center of the room, Patrick turns and stares at me. He looks like he doesn't fit here at all. While everything around us looks old, he looks young - apart from his eyes. Those eyes are the only part of his body that look as if they belong in a room like this at all. It's as if he was born hundreds of years ago and most of his body stopped aging but his eyes got older and older, or as if he's seen things - terrible things - that he can't forget. The way he stares at me causes me to take a step back, as if I should be scared. At the same time, I know that there's no point running: I can't run from him, and if I managed to get away, it would only be because he chose to let me go.
"Is this where you live?" I ask.
He turns away from me and walks over to the far side of the room. Opening a drawer in a small, old desk, he pulls out a book and sets it aside, then he steps back and stands there, staring at me again. It's as if he's waiting for me to go and look at the book, but there's part of me that doesn't want to do anything unless I'm certain it's safe. This seems to be how Patrick does things, though: he just stares at you until you work out what he wants. I don't understand why he doesn't talk.
"Is Sophie here?" I ask.
He shakes his head.
"Was she ever here?" I ask.
He pauses, and then he shakes his head again, more slowly this time.
I take a few cautious steps toward him, still glancing over at the bones that seem to litter the sides of the room. Hollow-eyed skulls stare back at me, and it's hard not to take them as some kind of warning. It's as if there was once a huge battle in here, and lots of people died, and then someone came in with a broom and just swept all the bodies to the side and left them to rot. This definitely feels like the kind of room where lots of people once died. It's just got that kind of atmosphere; I bet there are hundreds of ghosts.
I step closer to Patrick and, although I'm still scared, I reach out and take the book. It's ancient and heavy, and it feels like it's so fragile it might fall apart in my hands. There's no title on the front cover, but when I open it I find that in big, old-fashioned letters on the inside there's a single word: Gothos.
"What does that mean?" I ask. He doesn't answer, and I turn to the next page. Squinting, I try to work out what all the writing says, but it's impossible. It's written in that old
-fashioned writing that looks really neat but turns out to be impossible to read. I flick through the first few pages, but this is a huge book. "I can't read it," I say, but when I look up, Patrick's still just staring at me. It's as if he wants me to understand, but he can't say it in his own voice so he's hoping I'll work it out from the book.
"I don't know what it says," I continue, starting to feel more and more frustrated as I flick through the pages. Some of them have pictures: old illustrations that don't really make much sense to me, showing people fighting and, in one of them, a big spider. I keep looking through the book until suddenly I come to a blank section. It takes me a moment to realize that the final pages of the book have been torn out.
"What happened to the end?" I ask. I look up at him. "Who tore out the last pages?"
He stares at me, and there's a look of great sadness in his eyes. I've seen people who are sad before, like when my Dad died, or when my Mom can't get the peanut butter she wants from the store, but this is a different kind of sadness, like a kind of sadness that's permanent and can't ever be chased away.
"Did someone steal the last pages from you?" I ask.
He shakes his head.
"Then who took them?" I ask.
Slowly, he reaches under his coat and produces the torn-out pages.
"You tore them out?" I say, not really understanding. "Why did you do that to your own book?"
He looks down at the pages. For a moment, I think I see a tear in the corner of his eye.
"Have you read them?" I ask.
He doesn't reply.
"Don't you want to read the end?" I ask. "Don't you want to -" Suddenly something flashes past my eye, falling down onto the book with a quiet plopping sound. I look down and see a small spider crawling over the pages. I'm about to say something to Patrick, when another spider drops onto the book, followed by another. I look at Patrick, and he stares straight back at me as if he knows that something awful is about to happen.
Another spider falls, this time landing on the floor. I watch as it scurries across the stones. And then another spider falls, landing on my head. I shake it off, and watch as it too hits the floor and then scurries away. It's like it's raining spiders in here.
Slowly, I look up.
It takes me a moment to realize what I'm looking at. I don't know where they came from, but suddenly the entire ceiling is covered with thousands and thousands of tiny crawling spiders.
Jason Dunn
"Some people say spiders are more scared of us than we are of them," says Max. "That's not true. Not true at all. Most spiders are just waiting. They're killing time. They've always suspected that one day they'd have a chance to recover, to become strong again. They know that from time to time there are people who try to defy prophecies." He pauses, his eyes filled with darkness. "They've been waiting for a day like today."
"Uh-huh," I say as we continue to make our way along the stone passageway. Max talks a good story, and I've gotta admit that it would be real easy to get sucked into what he's saying. I can totally understand how impressionable minds could start to believe that some of the stuff he's talking about is real. After all, he seems to be taking a few basic truths and fleshing them out so that they seem almost possible.
"Look," he says suddenly, stopping and turning the flashlight toward the wall. I follow his stare and see half a dozen small spiders crawling around.
"Great," I say. "So there are spiders down here."
"You still don't believe me, do you?" he says, smiling.
"There's nothing to believe," I say. "Spiders are spiders. It's no secret that they're around. They're just... there."
"You've never wondered what they're doing?" he asks, with that stupid smile still on his face.
"No," I say, starting to get annoyed, "I've never wondered what they're doing! They're spiders, for fuck's sake! They're not doing anything, they're just being spiders. Crawling around and spinning webs, stuff like that." I look at my watch. It's getting toward mid-afternoon and I've still got to somehow get a story written up by the evening. "Look, Max..." I sigh. "I appreciate you bringing me out here, and it's great that you've got some kind of adventure game going on here, but I have a job to do, okay? I have a deadline. Some of us actually have busy lives."
He stares at me. Finally, that smile has almost gone from his face, although I can tell he doesn't really understand what I'm saying.
"Don't be offended, Max," I continue, "but I'm going to go now. You can stay down here, but I'm going to head back to town and write a front-page news story about... I don't know, a cat stuck in a tree or something like that. Okay?"
"We're nearly there -" he says weakly.
"Enough!" I shout at him, my voice echoing in the stone tunnel. "Enough, Max! This is fun, but after a while it just becomes... obviously bullshit! So there are spiders. Great. There's a tunnel. Great. None of this means anything. You're..." I pause, not sure whether I'm being too harsh. "You're a nice guy, Max, maybe, but you're not quite right in the head."
He frowns. "What do you mean?"
"You're..." Damn it, I'm being way too harsh but, at the same time, I feel like I need to say this. Max has obviously been living in some kind of fantasy world for far too long. "Max, do you by any chance live in your mother's basement?"
He pauses. "It's an attic," he says, sounding a little annoyed.
"Then -" I start to say, but before I can get another word out I feel a sharp pain on my neck. I reach back and feel something crawling on my shoulder, and when I brush it off I see that it's one of the spiders. "What the fuck!" I shout.
"What?" Max says, looking worried. "Did you get bitten?"
"No!" I shout back at him, rubbing the sore spot. "Maybe."
"Let me see," he says, grabbing my shoulder and leaning in to see. "You did!" he says, sounding scared and excited at the same time. "You got bitten! Do you know what this means?"
"No!" I say, exasperated. "What does it mean, Max?"
"I don't know," he replies, "but it must mean something."
"Fuck this," I say, stepping back. I keep rubbing the bite, which is starting to really hurt. "What kind of spiders are these anyway? Are they poisonous, Max? Fuck it, do I have to go to the E.R?"
"Stop!" Max says.
"I'm going," I say. "I've had enough of following lunatics down tunnels and getting bitten by possibly poisonous spiders, okay?"
"Come this way," Max says, beckoning me to follow him deeper into the tunnel.
"Thanks but no thanks," I say. "Good luck."
Max steps toward me, grabs my arm and spins me around. He shines the flash-light along the tunnel, back the way we came. "I don't think you have a choice," he says as the light picks out thousands of spiders crawling all over the walls, the ceiling, the floor... they're everywhere.
"Where the hell did they come from?" I ask, genuinely shocked to see so many of the little critters.
"I told you," Max says as we both stare at the spiders, "they're getting stronger. They've been waiting for this to happen, and now they're starting to sense that the moment is coming. That's why they've here. They want to see it for themselves."
"See what?" I ask, pushing Max against the wall. I've tried to keep from losing my temper so far today, but now I'm getting seriously annoyed. "What the hell do a bunch of spiders want to see, Max? You make them sound like fucking tourists out for a sightseeing trip. They're spiders! They're just dumb little bugs!"
Max stares at me, and then that damn stupid smile comes back to his face.
"Fuck you, Max!" I say. For a moment, I actually think I might be able to punch him, but I manage to restrain myself. "If these spiders are so damn smart," I ask, "how come I can do this?" I step over to a patch of swarming spiders and I stamp down on loads of them. When I lift my foot, the sole of my shoe is covered in the sticky, gooey mess of twenty or thirty squashed spiders.
"I wish you hadn't done that," Max says.
"Why not?" I ask as I take my shoe off and scra
pe the sole along the wall, trying to get as much of the spider goo off as possible. "Are the spiders gonna get mad at me? Are they gonna chase after me with pitchforks?"
"We can't go back the way we came," Max says. He seems annoyed with me now, as if suddenly he just wants to get this over with. He also seems kinda worried, which I guess fits with his whole 'being insane' personality. "You'll have to come this way, with me. There's a way out, if we can get to it."
"If we can get to it?" I ask. "If? Max, if I have to squash every damn spider in the world, I will." I look back the way we came. There are more and more spiders, and I really don't fancy making my way through them, especially if they've all got little teeth. Max's delusions might be crazy, but the spiders are real enough and there's still a chance that they're dangerous, especially in such huge numbers. Exasperated, I look along the tunnel into the gloom ahead of us. "Are you sure there's a way out if we carry on?" I ask.
"I know the layout," he says. "There's a chamber ahead, and then there's an exit that leads into the woods."
"Then we'll keep going," I say, gradually starting to recover my cool. I feel a little stupid for getting so annoyed at Max, but the truth is he's really annoying me now. I just came out here to get a stupid story about a mentally ill moron, and now I'm stuck in a tunnel with a bunch of spiders. I rub the back of my neck, feeling a small lump where I got bitten.
"Does it hurt?" Max asks as we start walking again.
"Not really," I say, although that's kind of a lie. It's definitely sore, and it stings a little. I've never been bitten by a spider before, but I've been stung by a wasp and that's what this feels like. "So what happens when you get bitten by one of these critters?" I ask.
"No idea," Max replies. "I've never seen it happen before. Maybe they're getting excited."
I glance back over my shoulder. I swear not only are there more spiders, but it looks like they're following us along the tunnel. "What type of spiders are they, anyway?" I ask.
