by Amy Cross
"Dunno," Max says. "There aren't many venomous types of spider in this neck of the woods, but there are a few. Nothing that should cause you too much trouble, though. The worst you'll get is a slight fever, hopefully. They're not here to hurt anyone, not yet anyway."
"And what are they here for?" I ask, trying not to get angry again.
"We're about a hundred meters from the chamber," Max says as we keep walking. "You'll see for yourself soon enough."
Todd
"Where did they come from?" I say as I stare up at the spiders. Every few seconds, more of them drop to the ground, but it seems like there's a never-ending supply of them. I can't see where they're coming from, but at this rate there soon won't be any more space for them. The entire ceiling is swarming and some are moving onto the walls, and the floor is starting to fill up more and more as well. I turn to Patrick. "Why are there so many of them?"
As usual, he doesn't say anything. He doesn't seem particularly scared of the spiders, which I guess is a good sign. Despite the fact that he's so quiet, I've got a feeling Patrick knows what he's doing, and I don't think he's evil. After all, I'm pretty sure he saved my life when I fell into the underground river. But why is he just standing there while more and more spiders gather above us? Surely he doesn't like having so many spiders around, does he?
"Can I go now?" I ask. "If Sophie's not here, I want to keep looking for her. I'm worried she's hurt."
Patrick just stares at me. It's almost like he doesn't realize that I'm here, except he's looking right at me so I guess he does know. So why won't he do anything? Why does he seem like he's almost frozen in place, as if he can barely even move?
"Can I go out the way we came?" I ask. I'm starting to get worried, because I'm not sure how to get away from this place, and I don't know whether Patrick's going to help me. I look up at the ceiling and see that there are more spiders than ever, and more and more of them are falling to the floor. "I want to go," I say, trying not to let Patrick see that I'm panicking. It's obvious that Sophie's not here. "Show me the way out!" I shout. "Please!"
Patrick looks up at the ceiling. The spiders are starting to fall faster now. I step back until I reach the small round lake in the middle of the room. Looking into the water, I see spiders trying to swim to the edge. Nowhere in this whole place seems to be free of them, and I suddenly realize I can feel something walking through my hair. I frantically try to brush them off, and three fall into my hands, but no sooner have I done that, than more spiders fall from the ceiling.
"Why won't you stop them?" I shout at Patrick, but then it occurs to me that maybe he can't. The spiders are falling on him too, but he's not making any effort to get rid of them. He just stands there as they crawl all over him.
Still trying to brush more spiders away, I rush over to the large door at one end of the room, but I find that it's locked. No matter how hard I try, I can't get the door to open, so I turn back, but I pull up short because now the whole room is just full of spiders. They're everywhere, filling the ceiling and walls and swarming across the floor. I run over to Patrick, but there are hundreds of spiders crawling all over his body and he doesn't seem to be reacting at all. He just looks down at me, as if nothing's happening.
"Where are they coming from?" I shout, trying to brush some of the spiders away from him. They're everywhere: crawling across his face, crawling over his shoulders, crawling through his hair and down his neck, into his clothes.
After staring at me for a moment, he holds out the torn pages from the book. I grab them and try to read them. Although I have to keep brushing spiders away, and although the writing is still in that old-fashioned style that's so hard to read, I focus and try to make out a few words on the pages, but it's useless. Whatever Patrick wants me to understand, I can't make it out.
"I don't know what it says," I shout at him as I look at more of the pages. The only thing that makes any sense is the set of illustrations, which seems to show some kind of battle. "Why won't you just tell me what it means?" I ask brushing a spider from my lips. I run over to the desk, trampling over all the spiders that cover the floor, and finally I open the book. I'm about to put the torn pages back in when Patrick grabs my arm and pulls me away. He drags me across the room and back toward the door. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a key and finally the door is opened. We enter the room and, looking back, I see that the whole place is filling up with spiders faster than ever. Patrick slams the door shut, leaving us in pitch darkness. I can't see anything, and all I can hear is the sound of thousands - maybe even millions - of spiders crawling around in the larger room next door.
Jason Dunn
Max leads me along the passageway, with the spiders seeming to follow us all the way. The bite on my neck is getting more and more painful, and I'm starting to seriously wonder whether I'm gonna get sick. After all, some spiders are venomous and, on top of that, they can carry diseases. The longer Max keeps leading me around down here, the longer it'll be before I can get to a doctor and have myself checked out, but every time I ask Max home much longer it'll be before we're 'there' - wherever the hell 'there' might be - he just says 'soon' and we keep on walking.
And then we reach a chamber.
It's fairly small and circular, with stone walls. As Max shines his flashlight around, I see that there are a few sets of chains fixed into the walls, as if someone used to keep prisoners down here. Forget Max's story about vampires and monsters: this looks like some kind of torture dungeon, and I'm pretty sure no-one has ever found this place before. I can see the front-page headline now: Mysterious dungeon discovered under Dedston. We can run this story for a week, even if it turns out that there's a boring explanation. Hell, we can even mention Max's crazy theories about the spiders, just to give the story an added jolt of mystery.
So Max delivered, huh? Who'd have thought it?
"Through there," Max says, pointing at a small dark arch at the other side of the chamber. There's no door, just a hole leading into a dark space. "If you really want to see what the spiders are here for, take a look through there."
I look back and see that the spiders seem to have stopped behind us. I know it'll sound crazy, but it really does seem as if they're following us and waiting for us to go first. It's weird how you can listen to a madman like Max for a while and start to see things from his point of view. I mean, I know the spiders are just a bunch of dumb little creatures, but the way Max describes them they could actually be something else entirely, almost as if they're thinking and plotting.
"Through there, huh?" I say. "I've gotta give you credit, Max. You've built this up pretty well. You've actually made me curious about what's in there."
He smiles as he hands me the flash-light. "I know you thought I was mad when you first met me," he says. "Sometimes I doubt my own sanity as well. But you'll see the truth."
I step forward, but Max grabs my arm to hold me back. "Just don't get too close," he says, his eyes filled with the glassy stare of a man who still believes all his own stories. "It's still just waking up, but it could be dangerous. Just take a look, understand what you see, and then we'll get out of here, okay?"
"Okay, Max," I say, grinning.
"How's the bite?" he asks, stepping behind me to take a look.
"How does it look?" I ask.
"Fine," he says, but there's a different tone to his voice, as if he's more worried than ever.
"Well," I say, taking a deep breath, "I'll just go take a look in this little room and then we'll be out of here." I step toward the arch.
"Be careful!" Max calls out again.
"Pinky promise," I say, ducking through the archway. I'm in a completely dark room, but I can tell from the way my footsteps echo that this is a huge chamber. I shine the flash-light around, and at first all I can make out is a series of stone walls. I take a step forward, still trying to see if there's anything nearby. The crazy thing is, this whole set of underground rooms is perfectly interesting in its own right. You don'
t need to invent monsters to try to drum up some drama. The fact that someone, long ago, built this underground complex, and then it lay forgotten and ignored for so many years, is fascinating. This is a history lesson, but one that's alive with possibilities and -
I pause.
Ahead of me, picked out in the flash-light's beam, something just moved.
I stand completely still. It wasn't a load more spiders. It was something big. Something bigger than me. I keep the flash-light pointed ahead of me, but I'm kinda nervous to find out what's up there. It occurs to me that I should maybe just back out and let the mystery linger, rather than pushing on ahead. After all, it's totally possible that by some complete fluke Max has stumbled upon a bear or... or...
Damn it, that wasn't a bear. It was... I don't know. I only caught a glimpse, and it looked like something long and thin, like a vine but...
There it is again, and this time I keep the flash-light trained on it. Whatever it is, it seems to be five or six meters tall. I move the flash-light along its length a little, and for a moment I genuinely can't work out what I'm looking at, but then I realize, and I step back in horror. It's a huge black spider, the size of a god-damned bus.
"Max!" I call out, feeling the blood pumping faster and faster through my body. A cold sweat is building, and I instinctively reach to the bite on the back of my neck. "Max!"
I look back, but Max doesn't reply. I guess he's staying out in the other chamber. Looking ahead of me again, I stare at the creature. It seems to be alive, but it's not moving very fast. I let the beam from the flash-light play across its body. It seems to be jet-black, but I can see its huge set of eyes and they seem to be staring straight at me. The whole thing is just so absurdly hideous, I find myself rooted to the ground, unable to move. What makes it even worse is that I can tell the spider is alive: it's moving, but very slowly.
"Isn't it magnificent?" Max says, coming up behind me. "I was here last week and it was a husk, but I could see the first signs of life. And now..." He lets out a sigh, clearly overwhelmed by the 'beauty' of the creature.
"What is it?" I ask.
"What does it look like?" he replies.
"A giant spider?"
"Exactly! This is the last of the great spiders, the last of the spiders that fought for centuries against the vampires. When the war ended, the vampires turned on one another. They'd fought for so long, they could no longer remember how to be at peace. Total, perpetual war. But one of the spiders survived, kept in place down here by the will of the vampires." He pauses. "Now it's all changing."
I turn to him. If even 1% of what he's saying is true, this is the biggest news story of all time. This'll be on the front page of every newspaper in the world, splashed across every website... and I'll be the one who gets the credit. I won't just win the Pulitzer, I'll take a Nobel to go with it.
"Patrick is denying the prophecy," Max says. "In doing so, he's weakening the forces that keep the spiders from fighting back. Every second, this beautiful creature is getting stronger." He steps over to the spider and puts a hand on one of its huge, thick legs. "It won't be long before it's ready." He turns to look at the thousands of tiny spiders entering the room. "They're waiting. The dumb little ones are starting to sense that something's afoot."
"We can't let this thing loose," I say. "We have to photograph it, and capture it, and study it. We can't just let it loose."
Max laughs. "It took the vampires more than a century to defeat the spiders last time. Do you really think you can do anything? Humans didn't notice the last war, but we'll definitely notice this one."
I take a step back, starting to feel nauseous. "You sound like you want it all to happen," I say, starting to wonder exactly how I'm going to get out of here. I'm also starting to sweat, and I'm worried that means the spider bite on my neck is going to turn out to be venomous after all.
"No," Max says. "I mean, there's part of me that would like to see this magnificent creature at full strength, but I know it would be devastating for humanity. We have to find some other way, some way to make sure that it doesn't fully return to life."
"And how do we -" I start to say, but a sudden cramp hits me in the stomach. I almost fall to the ground as a horrific pain sears through my body.
Max rushes over and steadies me. "What's wrong?" he asks. "Is it the bite?"
"It's my stomach," I say through clenched teeth, barely able to withstand the agony. "Something's wrong."
"It's okay," Max says, helping me over to the side of the room so I can lean against the wall. "I'll get you up to the surface. We can go to a doctor."
With sweat pouring down my face, I can barely even nod. It feels like my stomach is full of knives, like my whole body is starting to burn. I hold my hand up and see that I'm trembling. Something's seriously wrong, and I need medical help. "Let's go," I say, almost vomiting but just about managing to keep it in.
"There's a way out," Max says. He tries to lead me away, but I double over in agony and have to cling to the wall to stop from falling over. "Come on," Max continues, "we can't stay here!"
I look up at him. For a moment, I feel like telling him to go on without me, but then I feel myself about to vomit and I can't hold it in any longer. Bending over, I throw up all over the floor... But instead of the usual mixture of liquids, I vomit up hundreds of small spiders. Staring down at them as they scurry away across the floor, I try to stand up straight, but the effort's too much and I vomit again. More spiders pour up from my stomach and out of my mouth, and this time I fall down onto my hands and knees. For a third time, my stomach spasms and hundreds of spiders pour from my mouth onto the floor. Still, I can feel more and more of them in my stomach, crawling around, filling up my body. It feels like I'm about to burst open.
Todd
Suddenly there's light, as Patrick lights a set of candles on the wall. I turn to see that we're in a smaller room that seems to have been hollowed out of stone. It's a real contrast to the ornate room we were just in; whereas the large chamber looked like something out of an old country house, this one looks like little more than a cave. All around, there are human skulls. Some of them are on the floor, broken and smashed; others are on ledges set into the walls; and many more seem to be fixed into the walls. Most of them seem ancient, although one or two appear to have patches of skin and even hair still attached to them. As well as the skulls, there are countless broken bones, ribs and other body parts scattered around.
"Did you kill all these people?" I ask, unable to stop looking at the skulls. It's almost as if they're staring back at me. Could one of them be Sophie?
Patrick ignores me and walks over to a stone table at the other end of the room. He puts the book down and opens it to the section where the pages are missing, and then he takes the torn pages and straightens them out. He seems completely absorbed in what he's doing, as if he's almost forgotten that I'm here.
I turn to look at the door that leads back into the larger chamber. It seems to be the only way in or out of this little stone room, which means we're trapped in here for as long as the spiders are out there. And I can hear them still: crawling all over the room, each of them with eight scratchy little legs. The thought of going back out there fills me with dread. I lean down and look through the keyhole. For a moment, I can't see anything, but suddenly a spider scurries into the space and I have to blow through the keyhole to force it back. I turn back to look at Patrick, who still seems completely absorbed by the book.
"Where did all those spiders come from?" I ask. It feels almost as if every spider in the entire world must be here by now, crawling around and waiting for something to happen. I reach into my bag and pull out the notebook Sophie gave me a while ago; staring at the spot where she's written 'Be brave' over and over again, I try to imagine her saying the words. I can almost hear her voice now...
"Be brave," she whispers in my ear.
I turn to Patrick. He seems transfixed by the pages from the book, as if they've cast some kin
d of spell over him. It's like there's something he wants to do, but he can't do it.
"Why did you take those pages out?" I ask, walking over to join him at the table. Glancing down, I see that there's some strange writing carved into the stone, but I don't understand what it means; it uses letters I don't even recognize, and it looks ancient. I see a single, solitary spider crawling up the side of the table. Looking up, I expect to see more of them on the ceiling, but thankfully there aren't any more. The spider crawls up onto the top of the table and then it seems to just stop and stand there, watching the book.
I reach out to squash the spider with my notebook, but Patrick grabs my arm to stop me. I look up into his eyes and see that he's deadly serious, so I decide to let the spider live for now.
Taking the notebook from my hand, Patrick stares at the spot where Sophie wrote 'Be brave'. Slowly, he runs the tip of a finger against the lettering, tracing her words.
"That's Sophie's writing," I say. "She wanted me to remember to be brave at school." I pause, hoping that this - finally - might be enough to get him to say something, but he just stares at the writing. "Do you know where she is?" I ask. "Is she still alive?"
He turns to me, and he nods.
"She is?" I ask, my heart filling with hope for the first time since I set out. "Where is she?"
He pauses, and then he hands the notebook back to me. Turning back to the large old book, he starts putting the pages back into place, sliding them in one at a time. As he does so, they each seem to become properly reattached, as if they were never missing. Finally he gets to the last page and, after a brief pause, he adds that one as well before closing the book.
I wait for something to happen. There doesn't seem to be much point asking him what he's doing; it's not like he's going to sit down and explain everything to me, but after a moment I realize that something's different. At first, I can't work out what it is, but slowly I turn to look back at the door and I realize that I can't hear the spiders anymore. It's as if they're gone.
