'Nids

by Ray Garton

  “You should be. Let me drive to my place.”

  “Okay,” he said. He reached into his pocket, fished out the keys, and handed them to her.

  Ten

  “So you believe me now,” Brandon said.

  Harker nodded. “I believe you.” He took a pen from a holder on the desk and poised it over a yellow legal pad, ready to write.

  “Then why am I still here?”

  “Because I need you to tell me what you saw. I need you to describe in as much detail as possible what it was that carried Tiffany down that slope.”

  “I told you already. It was big, it had a lot of legs, hairy legs, and it had these big fucking ... um, well I don’t know what else to call them besides fangs.”

  Harker wrote on the pad. “Fangs.”

  “Yeah. They were black. And there was hair all around them.”

  “Black fangs.” He looked at Brandon, frowning. He had hoped the boy would change his story to something more believable.

  “Four of them. Two on top, two on the bottom.”

  “How tall was it?”

  “It was low, maybe three feet tall, no more. But it was broad.”

  “You say it had a lot of legs. How many, you think?”

  “Eight? Ten? And they were long, maybe five feet or so.”

  Harker’s frown deepened. Brandon’s story was only getting worse. “What about its body?”

  “It was long.”

  “A long body with eight or ten legs and big black fangs.” Harker sighed. He closed his eyes a moment, and in the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw the twisted, torn, headless body of Tiffany Huff. “It sounds like a spider.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell you.”

  “Brandon, you know as well as I do there’s no spider that big.”

  “If you’d told me that this afternoon, I’d agree with you, but I know what I saw.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  “How am I supposed to get home? My car’s still up on Lovers’ Lookout.”

  “I’m going to call your dad. I don’t want you driving while under the influence. You can get your car tomorrow. I should impound it because you’ve been drinking, but I’ll let it slide this time.”

  Brandon sighed.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything at all?”

  “Yeah. It moved fast. Whatever it was, it was like lightning. It was there, on her, and gone. Like that,” Brandon said as he snapped his fingers.

  Harker nodded as he wrote.

  He had no idea how he was going to handle this. He could not warn people about something unless he knew what it was, and he knew it wasn’t a spider. How could it be?

  He remembered that there had been a carnival in Newbury over the past weekend. He wondered if some kind of exotic animal could have escaped from captivity. Was it possible the carnival troupe would pack up and leave without reporting a missing animal? It seemed unlikely, but it was worth checking into.

  “Okay, Brandon, I’m going to call your dad. You just sit tight.”

  Eleven

  Heidi lived in Wooded Acres, an affluent development that was only three years old. The two-story houses were large and not very close together. To get there, they had to go through the woods that spread out at the bottom of Creasey Hill.

  As Heidi drove away from the Sheriff’s Department, they said nothing for a while. She was the first to speak. “Mind if I turn on the radio?”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Rodney said.

  She turned it on, but neither of them paid any attention to it. The music and voices served as a soothing white noise.

  “This evening didn’t go very well,” Rodney said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “I’ve known Tiffany almost my whole life,” Rodney said. “Ever since first grade. I’ve never liked her much, to be honest, but still ... I can’t get it out of my mind, her head lying there on the ground.”

  Heidi reached over and squeezed his thigh. “That’s awful.”

  She drove down Cutter Way, with dark woods on each side of the road. The Mustang’s headlights sliced through the black night ahead of them.

  The Nora Jones song ended and a news update came on. A female newscaster reported that the BioGenTech fire was under control, but still burning. Then:

  “A teenager was brutally killed in Hope Valley tonight,” the newscaster said. “Seventeen-year-old Tiffany Louise Huff was attacked and decapitated at Lovers’ Lookout earlier tonight. Sheriff Tony Harker is giving few details, but says he believes the girl was attacked by an unidentified animal.”

  “An unidentified animal,” Rodney muttered.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I have no idea.” He said nothing for a while. “A bear, maybe? Something strong.”

  “Do you have bears around here?” Heidi asked.

  “Not that I’ve ever known about.”

  The news switched to sports, and after that, a U2 song played.

  Finally, Rodney said, “How would you like to go to a movie tomorrow night?”

  “Sure. What do you want to see?”

  “Well, we could go to the drive-in and see Thrill Killer.”

  “A scary movie? After all this? I don’t know.”

  He smiled. “We don’t have to watch the movie, you know.”

  “True. Okay, sounds good.”

  “We should get something to eat, too.”

  Heidi said, “We could get a pizza and take it to the movie with us.”

  “That’s a good – “

  Something appeared in front of the car. It was a blur that shot out into the road from the woods on the right.

  Heidi screamed as she slammed on the breaks.

  Rodney was thrown forward against his seatbelt. The Mustang swerved and the tires screamed until it came to a stop at an angle across the two-lane road.

  It had been little more than a golden blur in the glow of the headlights, and then it was gone. It occurred to Rodney as his heart thundered in his throat that it was the color of urine.

  “What was that what was that?” Heidi said, her words running together. She clutched the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands and her right leg was straight, knee locked, as she continued to press on the brake pedal.

  “I don’t know,” Rodney said, voice hoarse.

  “Did you see that, did you see how fast it was, how big it was?”

  “Calm down, Heidi.”

  Her breasts rose and fell with her rapid breaths.

  Something slammed into the rear of the car and made it shake.

  Heidi screamed again.

  Metal crunched in the back and Rodney turned, looked out the back window. Something moved in the red glow of the taillights. It cast a quick shadow on the pavement, then it was gone.

  Then it was gone.

  “Let’s go, Heidi,” Rodney said tremulously.

  She sat there clutching the steering wheel, her wide eyes staring straight ahead, mouth open, foot still pressing down hard on the brake pedal.

  Rodney feared she was in shock.

  “Heidi, come on, let’s – “

  Something slammed into the door on Rodney’s side and made the car rock. He cried out in surprise. There was as much fear as surprise in his cry. He turned and looked out the window on his right, but saw only darkness.

  Whatever it was, it banged into the door again, jolting the car, and this time, a long, sharply-pointed black spike pierced the door. Its point came within a fraction of an inch of Rodney’s thigh, and he threw himself to the left.

  “Heidi, let’s get out of here!” he shouted as he looked at the spike.

  The spike pried back and forth, then was ripped out with an abrupt groan of metal.

  Rodney moved close to the door again and put his face to the window in time to see only a flash of movement.

  “Go, Heidi, go!”

  She did not move. Her bulging eyes did not blink.<
br />
  “Heidi!”

  Something heavy jumped onto the rear of the car, which sunk beneath its weight. The car rocked and bounced with a terrible clattering sound.

  Rodney looked back and saw that something crawl over the back window on its way to the car’s roof.

  “God dammit, Heidi, go!”

  She made a whimpering sound that was almost inaudible because of the clatter.

  A black spike ripped through the vinyl top, then two more. They closed together and tore a hole in the roof of the car.

  Rodney unfastened his seatbelt, reached over, and pushed Heidi up against the door. He lifted his leg over the gearshift and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. The engine revved, but the car did not move because Heidi was still pressing on the brake. He reached over and hooked his arm beneath her thigh, pulled her leg up with effort until her foot came up off the brake pedal. The car shot forward and Rodney grabbed the wheel with his left hand to keep it on the road.

  “Heidi, let go of the wheel, dammit!” he shouted.

  “What’s happening what’s happening?” she cried as she dropped her hands from the wheel, then lifted them to her face.

  The black spikes ripped the car’s vinyl top further, until a larger hole had opened up.

  The Mustang convertible sped down Cutter Way straddling the broken white line down the center of the road.

  Rodney reached over and held the wheel with both hands, then pounded his foot down on the brake pedal.

  The car screeched to a stop and the thing on the roof tumbled down the windshield and over the hood. It fell to the road in front of the car.

  Rodney stared at the thing lying on the road in the car’s headlight beams. He squinted at it, then opened his eyes wide, certain they were playing a trick on him.

  A cluster of long, hairy, stick-like legs desperately pumped up and down. Rodney realized it was upside-down, on its back, fighting to right itself again. It was golden in color, its body long and in two segments. It occurred to Rodney that the thing’s body was as long as the love seat in his living room at home, except the love seat, of course, did not have all those legs.

  After rocking back and forth and fighting for purchase, it righted itself.

  Heidi screamed.

  Rodney dragged in a long, rumbling gasp.

  It was a spider, just as Brandon had said, an enormous golden spider with legs about five feet long and a black-striped abdomen.

  Heidi screamed again and kept on screaming as the creature turned and faced them head-on, then climbed up onto the hood with its back half hanging off. Two black beady eyes positioned very close together stared in through the windshield above the nightmarish maw. Its three black fangs, one on top and two beneath them, articulated separately at the bottom center of its round, hairy face. Rodney realized in a fleeting way that it was missing a fang, the one on the top left side.

  He stomped his foot onto the gas pedal and the car bolted forward. He turned the wheel back and forth, swerving the car to the right, to the left, back to the right again.

  The spider slid off the hood on the left side and fell to the road, and Rodney got the car on a straight course again, but he did not slow down.

  Heidi continued to scream.

  Rodney looked in the rearview mirror.

  It was following them, chasing them. And although it was several yards behind, it was keeping pace with them.

  “Stop, Heidi, stop!” he shouted.

  She stopped screaming and sobbed instead.

  He drove faster as he kept glancing in the mirror.

  The spider was falling behind.

  He rounded a corner with a faint squeal of tires, then sped down another straight stretch.

  It was gone. It had given up.

  “Did you see that, did you see it?” Heidi cried.

  “I saw it, all right,” he said as he kept driving.

  A furniture store commercial played on the radio, completely ignored.

  Rodney finally slowed the car to a stop at the side of the road. He put the gearshift in park and unfastened his seatbelt. “We’re trading seats, Heidi. Come over here.” He pulled on the door handle, but the door stuck. He slammed his weight against it a couple of times and it popped open. He got out and walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side as Heidi unfastened her seatbelt, then clumsily climbed over into the passenger’s seat as she continued to cry.

  Rodney turned to her and put his arm across her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  She was calmer now, sniffling. She nodded erratically. “I-I’m j-just a little shuh-shook up, is all.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Rodney’s heart was speeding in his chest, and his hands trembled. He leaned over and kissed Heidi. “You gonna be okay, now?”

  “I ... I don’t know. I mean, I-I-I can’t believe we just ... saw that.”

  “Neither can I. But that’s what Brandon said, remember? He said it had a lot of legs, just like a spider.”

  She nodded.

  “Seatbelts,” Rodney said.

  They fastened their belts, then Rodney put the car in gear. He checked for traffic, then made a U-turn on Cutter Way.

  “What are you doing?” Heidi said, her voice rising higher with each word.

  “We have to go back.”

  “Why? Can’t you just take me home?”

  “I will if you want, but we’ve got to tell the sheriff, and he’s more likely to believe both of us than just me.”

  He drove back the way they’d come.

  “What if it’s still there?”

  Rodney increased his speed. “Then I’ll run over it.”

  “We’re going back to the sheriff’s office?”

  “Not right away. There’s someone we need to talk to first, someone who can tell us exactly what that thing was.”

  “Who?”

  “My little brother.”

  Twelve

  The crescent moon was an amorphous glow behind the dark smoke from the BioGenTech fire as Rodney drove home. The smoke moved in a thin mist through town, creating halos around the streetlights. The night had grown chillier in the last hour. Rodney drove down Center Street to the southern end of town, where the Lepkes lived in a subdivision called Hope Valley Heights.

  Rodney looked at his watch; it was ten minutes after eleven. His parents would be in bed already, which was fine. His dad was going to be very upset about the damage done to the Mustang and Rodney did not look forward to explaining it to him.

  His little brother Harold would still be awake in his room, playing a video game or watching a DVD, maybe playing with Gideon, his tarantula.

  Rodney pulled into the driveway. Dad’s SUV and Mom’s Toyota were parked in the closed garage.

  “So, you think your little brother will know what kind of spider it is?” Heidi asked as they got out of the car.

  “He’s nuts for arachnids,” he said. “He’s got a tarantula, a scorpion. Harry’s real smart, but he’s a little weird. Kind of a geek.”

  Rodney went to the rear of the car to inspect the damage.

  There was a hole a few inches around in the edge of the trunk. There were two, actually, but one had something lodged in it ... something long and black with a lump of viscous pus-like goo on the top end of it. Rodney wrapped his hand around the black object and pried it from the hole in the trunk.

  It was about a foot long, as smooth and hard as bone. It was round and cylindrical at the top, but in the last few inches, it became flat and narrow with a serrated edge that culminated in a very sharp tip.

  “What’s that?” Heidi said.

  “When it was in front of the car, I noticed it looked funny that it had only one fang on top,” Rodney said. “It lost one in the trunk.”

  “That’s one of its fangs?”

  “Yeah. My little brother’s gonna love this. If he believes it.”

  Holding the fang in his right hand, Rodney led Heidi up the front walk to the door. His
keys jangled as he unlocked the door and they went inside. They went down the hall to the first door on the left, and Rodney knocked quietly.

  “Harry?” he said just above a whisper. He didn’t want to disturb his parents. He could hear a movie playing in the bedroom. Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and led Heidi inside.

  Eleven-year-old Harry sat at his cluttered desk facing the computer screen. He was watching an old black-and-white movie on the monitor. Rodney recognized it as one of Harry’s favorites, Black Scorpion, about a giant scorpion. Harry must have seen the movie a hundred times, but he never tired of it.

  Harry turned in his chair. He’d inherited their mom’s blond hair and wore black-rimmed glasses with thick lenses. He was chubby from spending so much time inside and too little time exercising.

  There were posters on the walls of spiders and scorpions, including two movie posters – Black Scorpion and Tarantula. Models of a variety of arachnids covered the shelves on the walls. Hanging from the ceiling in one corner of the room was a spider mobile. Shelves held rows of books on one wall. There were a few regular toys here and there, but the room was dominated by arachnids.

  “Hey, Harry,” Rodney said.

  “Hey,” the boy said.

  “This is Heidi,” Rodney said. “I’ve told you about her.”

  Harry stood, facing them. “Hello, Heidi,” he said.

  “Hi, Harry,” she said. “It’s nice to – “ She gasped.

  Harry wore blue pajamas, and clinging to the front of the shirt over his chest was a large tarantula.

  Heidi stepped back and moved behind Rodney.

  “Can you put Gideon away for now?” Rodney said.

  Harry went to a shelf that held two terrariums. He gently plucked the tarantula from his shirt, lifted the top on one of the terrariums, and put the spider inside.

  “What do you want?” Harry said.

  “Harry, you’re not going to believe this,” Rodney said, speaking quietly.

  “Believe what?”

  “We just saw a spider.”

  “So?”

  “It wasn’t an ordinary spider. It was half the size of my car.”