Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  Karen motioned him over to her and parted the leaves on one of the low vines.

  “Now you want to pick the black ones, not the red ones. Okay?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Be sure and wear your gloves so the thorns don’t get you.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “And be careful, they squish very easily.”

  “Yes, Mo…WHOA! MOM! DON’T MOVE!”

  Karen froze, reacting to the obvious fear in Tucker’s voice. She thought for moment that a copperhead must be coiled right by her ankle, but then noticed that Tucker wasn’t looking at the ground. He stared past her head, slightly to the right, at something behind her. Leaning slightly toward him, she carefully turned her head to look in the same direction that he did. For a second she didn’t see it, then her eyes readjusted and brought the object of the boy’s outburst into view.

  About three feet from her head, a large yellow and black spider hung from its web attached to the trees. Repressing a shudder, Karen leaned away from it, and got to her feet. She had completely forgotten about these things. This specimen ranked among the bigger ones that she remembered, at least four inches from the tips of its back legs to the ends of its forelimbs.

  “What is that thing? Tucker demanded, now succumbing to the typical seven year olds fascination with all things horrible and repulsive.

  “When I was a little girl, we called those ‘Golden Garden Spiders,’” she recalled. “My brothers used to catch grasshoppers and throw them in their webs to feed them.” Karen always felt sorry for the grasshoppers, and refused to join in her brother’s fun. She found the spiders to be repulsive, horrible killers that brought death to good, harmless bugs like butterflies who just wanted to fly free.

  Her opinion of them was cemented by the time she accidently drove her bicycle through one of the large spider’s webs. Only eight years old at the time and riding her new Schwinn down a dirt path near her family’s farmhouse, she ducked her bike between two trees and suddenly there was a large spider covering half her face. It had crawled up over her right eye and into her hair, as she screamed and crashed into a nearby bush. Her mom rushed out and found her thrashing in hysterics, beating her head and tearing at her hair. It took her parents almost half an hour to calm her so they could comb the pieces of spider from her locks.

  Now she looked at the horrid creature with fresh disgust.

  “That is so cool!” the boy enthused. “Is it deadly?”

  “No, but it can give you a painful bite,” she warned, noting wryly to herself how it only took something loathsome and disgusting to raise his enthusiasm for the trip. “And you have to be careful about these things. You don’t always see them right away, sometimes not until you’re right on top of one. So pay attention, and look around you while you’re picking.”

  “No problem!” he replied, and she got the distinct impression he would be looking for other spiders more than he would be searching for berries. Oh well, she knew he was just following in the footsteps of her brothers and every other little boy that she knew. And truthfully she felt slightly relieved that he had found something to entertain himself with, while she busied herself with picking berries and reminiscing.

  Doing a quick scan around her to make sure her immediate vicinity remained spider free, she starting working through the thorny vines and picking berries. This kind of work required concentration to do right. The smell of the soil and undergrowth mixed with the sweeter scent of the occasional crushed berry. She popped one in her mouth, and lost herself in the flavor. Dewberries were the taste of her childhood, roaming the sandy ditches with her brothers and filching the occasional berry from her own basket. The heat didn’t bother her so much back then, it merely being one more element taken for granted in rural Texas.

  Now she sweated buckets, and couldn’t totally pretend to be used to it. An adult life spent in central air conditioning and shopping malls had softened her from her hardier days of yore.

  “Mom!”

  Snapping out of her reverie, she realized that Tucker had been calling her repeatedly.

  “What is it, Tuck?”

  “Come look at this spider. It’s even bigger! It’s huge!”

  Lovely.

  “Not right now, son. I’m trying to gather enough berries to make a pie.”

  “Mom! Come look!”

  With a sigh, she pushed herself up and plodded over to see what had her son in such thrall. His face flushed red with excitement, and he pointed with barely contained glee at a spot between two of the trees. She walked up beside him, tousled his hair, and followed the direction he pointed. Sure enough, another spider hung where he gestured.

  And it was indeed bigger.

  Karen frowned at the thing. She had been slightly surprised by the size of the one she nearly stumbled into earlier. This early in June, they should still be fairly small, not reaching their full size till August. But the one earlier easily measured as big as any she had ever seen. The spider before her now presented a different matter entirely.

  Its legs stretched a good eight to ten inches across its web.

  “That’s not right,” she muttered. Like many other people, she once gave into curiosity and studied that which scared her. Now she racked her brain, to try and dredge that old knowledge up.

  “Argiope aurantia,” she whispered to herself, as if for reassurance, “a large orb weaver that can attain a leg span of up to four inches.”

  Only this one measured easily twice that.

  It said something about the strength of its silk, that the big spider didn’t cause its web to sag more than it did. Several small cocoons of silk dotted its web. She remembered those from her childhood, the shrouded remains of the unfortunate grasshoppers and butterflies that her brothers caught and tossed to the spiders. These wrapped figures seemed much larger though, and she found herself nervously leaning closer to get a better look. A moment’s study revealed what she feared.

  This spider fed on birds.

  “Okay,” she murmured to herself, “that’s gotta cause a kink in the old food chain.” None of the spiders back on her childhood farm ever did anything like this. Suppressing a shudder, she started to lean back when an object on the ground caught her eye.

  Down near the bottom of the web, an even larger wad of silk lay huddled against the tree. It appeared significantly larger than the ones in the web. It took her second to realize that it must be either a cat or a rabbit that wandered to close to the bottom of the web and gotten caught.

  This thing fed on small animals too!

  With a sudden tightness in her throat, Karen ever so carefully backed away from the predator that glowered down at her from its web. The size of the thing made her feel slightly small and childlike again, and not in a good way. She did a slow pan of the area around her and spotted two more of the spiders hanging along the fence line on the opposite side of the road. Just like the creatures of her childhood, these had a way of not being seen until you were either right on top of one, or actively looking for them. One of them measured at least half again as large as the one before her.

  “This isn’t right,” she repeated to herself. “They don’t get this big. They shouldn’t be anywhere near this big.”

  “Mom?”

  “Tucker,” she continued backing away from the large arachnid in front of her with caution, “I want you to get back onto the road. Stay away from the trees and the fence line.”

  “Mom?” Tucker sounded nervous, subconsciously picking up on his mother’s fear, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. Just do what I say.” That didn’t even sound convincing to her. “Stay on the road.”

  “Mom, I don’t want to do this anymore.” There was just the hint of a quaver in that voice, “Let’s get Dad and go home.”

  “As soon as he gets Bunny, we will pack up and go somewhere else.”

  “Bunny’s already back at the car.”

  A quick glance back at the car confirmed this r
eport. Bunny lay panting beside the front wheel. Karen stared at the dog, sensing something wrong even from this distance. Bunny was an excitable and over friendly dog, and should have come bouncing over to them. Instead she leaned panting near the door, as if wanting nothing more in this world than for that door to open so she could get inside. Some instinct inside Karen told her that the dog had the right idea here.

  “Tuck, let’s go,” she spoke as levelly as she could. “Go let Bunny in the car and then get in with her.”

  “But what about Dad?”

  “I’m going to give him a call on his cell phone. He’s probably still hunting Bunny over there in those trees. You just get in the car like you’re told.”

  She trailed behind as Tucker ran to the car. He yanked open the door and leaped in the car. After a moment, he leaned back out and started pulling on Bunny.

  “Mom! There’s something wrong with Bunny! She’s got some blood on her side and her legs don’t seem to work!”

  “Just get her in the car! I’ll be right there. Now close that door, and be sure the windows are all rolled up!”

  “Argiope aurantia employs a paralysis toxin that immobilizes its prey for later consumption.” The voice of her old prof rang through her mind.

  Finding David’s number on her speed dial, Karen quickly pressed it and prayed. She told herself that she was overreacting and David would be coming out of that thicket in a minute, angry with her for upsetting Tucker. Nothing would make her happier at the moment.

  For a moment, only the maddening buzz of the locust answered her, and then she heard it…

  …David’s phone ringing in the nearby thicket.

  Slowly she lowered her own phone and listened. David had programmed the Hamster Dance song into his phone, and the notes carried clearly from the mesquite thicket across the fence. The ring tone sounded surprisingly close. Apparently David didn’t go far into it after all.

  “Or didn’t make it very far,” nn unwelcome voice from the back of her mind amended. With a determined effort, she fought that voice down. The ringing stopped and she heard the faint voice coming from her own phone informing her that the person she called was not answering. Punching David’s number again, she listened as the music resumed over in the dense cluster of mesquites.

  Still no answer.

  “David!” she yelled across the ditch at the thicket.

  Nothing.

  Karen rocked from one foot to the other, torn by indecision. The phone was not far into those woods, and David obviously needed her. But that thicket could be crawling with these large spiders. An unbidden image of a large white cocoon with the sound of David’s cell phone issuing from it rose in her mind. She repressed it with a shudder. Even an unusually large argiope shouldn’t have the venom to take down a grown man.

  “But how many of them are there,” she muttered to herself, “and how large do they get?” And despite their appearance, did these things really count as the spider she knew?

  There also remained the problem of Tucker sitting back there in the car. She didn’t want to leave him alone, not for an instant, on this back road. What horrified her was the thought that if her mental image of a silk wrapped David reflected reality, then he wouldn’t be dead. He would be paralyzed, helpless, and counting on her to save him. For a moment, she felt as paralyzed by the circumstances as if bitten herself. Any course she took would be endangering a loved one. In the end, she realized there remained only one course of action. She needed to get help.

  Somewhere, a few miles back, a tiny town named Weyrich had been their point of departure from the main road. It didn’t have much…just a store, a few houses, and what looked like a volunteer fire station…but right now that would be good enough. Just get a few good men, armed with bug spray and a first aid kit, and she would return for David. She could be there and back in fifteen minutes.

  She turned toward the car and froze.

  Tucker’s little white face was up against the windshield and screaming at her. With the windows up, the sound didn’t reach her. For one soul searing moment, she thought that one of the spiders might have gotten into the car with him. But then she realized that he screamed and gesticulated at her.

  Whirling around in alarm, she scanned the road behind her and then the ditch nearby. Nothing loomed up and menaced her. Only the sound of that damned locust disturbed an otherwise quiet and empty road. With a puzzled frown, she turned back to the car.

  If anything, Tucker seemed to be screaming harder and pointing at her, his eyes so wide that she could see their whites even from this distance. She looked at him in confusion, trying to decipher the cause of his distress. Then at the last second, far too late, she looked up…

  …just as the monster descending on its web line reached her.

  Dog Matters

  The red-eyed bogle chuckled to itself as it darted from the blackness under the entertainment center.

  It flitted across the soft blue rectangle of moonlight, cast from the overhead skylight, and then concealed itself in the pleated folds of the sofa’s skirting. Its filthy little fingernails dug into the upholstery as it scrabbled up onto the cushion. The tiny creature surveyed the dim recesses of the dark living room, then headed for the laundry basket that The Lady left sitting on the other cushion. Its eyes narrowed while it rubbed its grubby little hands in anticipation…its expression betraying the small monster’s conclusion that mealtime had arrived.

  It didn’t know how right it was.

  I launched myself from the basket onto the thing, sinking my front claws into its chest and pinning it down on the cushion. It emitted one tiny, surprised squeak before my jaws found its neck and decided the matter with a final crunch. The feral instincts of my ancestors flowed through me while I held the limp form in my mouth, scanning the room for any challengers for my prize.

  Of course, since I’m the only cat of this house, there were none.

  It tasted a bit foul, but I didn’t intend to eat its flesh. The body would evaporate over the next few seconds anyway. If a human were here to look at it, it would have disappeared instantly. As it faded, I consumed the eldritch essence released in the process of its disappearance.

  Sated and content, I leapt up onto the back of the couch and settled in. The Lady would not be missing any socks this coming morning, so she should be using the Happy Words when she stroked me. That made it twice as good.

  Chipper padded into the room, probably attracted by the quiet commotion of my hunt’s conclusion. Ears alert, the spaniel looked at me with a quizzical tilt of his head. Then the last lingering trace of my prey’s scent must have reached his nose, because he lost all interest and continued on to the kitchen to his water bowl. Bogles are cat matters, at least when there is a cat in the house, and dogs prefer to focus on matters of their own. It surprised me that he even bothered to investigate, since he knew I intended to get the little sock eater tonight.

  Chipper and I were brought into this house as a puppy and kitten, and we lived quite comfortably together. Chipper served as the favorite for The Lady’s mate, while I gravitated to the gentler tones and softer lap of The Lady herself. We both endured The Child, although Chipper managed with far better humor than I. The Child had only started walking a year ago, so evading her posed no real challenge yet. I tended to do so without hesitation, but after The Lady’s mate stopped coming home, Chipper started staying even closer to The Child as if she were now a solemn charge that had been handed down to him.

  Dogs can be like that.

  I remembered The Lady petting me with Sad Words for many a season. I could feel the death in her words, and knew she wouldn’t be bringing home another mate for a very long time. They had mated for life, and didn’t anticipate how short life could sometimes be. Cats do not mate in such a way but we do pair bond, so I understood the sadness. I purred all the reassurance I could at her, and kept her lap as warm as she would let me. After a long time, almost a year, the Happy Words started to come back.
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br />   Cats and Dogs do not speak in words like humans do. Our speech is in the nuances of our eyes, our ears, our tails, and our postures. We do vocalize, but often it is to draw attention to us while we’re talking, or just to emphasize a point. And that is how we understand humans. We may pick up a few words like our names, “here kitty kitty,” or “scat” but it is the tones and the people themselves we listen to. Dogs are better at words…something Chipper never misses an opportunity to remind me.

  Tonight though, Chipper’s eyes scanned the dark living room and kitchen while he lapped at his bowl. Everything about his posture spoke of wariness. His attitude started to rub off on me, and I scanned the area with my own superior night vision.

  “Chipper,” I stretched and resettled myself more comfortably, “what ails you? Our people sleep, and the house rests quiet. The sock thief is no more, and nothing stirs in the shadows.”

  Chipper sniffed the air before answering.

  “I don’t know, Minke,” he replied with a soft whine. “Yet something…I...I don’t know.”

  “Then to bed with you, addled oaf,” I yawned with good humor, “Perhaps a good night’s sleep will sharpen your wits.”

  He sulked back to the bedrooms, obviously unsettled. I watched him disappear down the hall, threading his way through the toys left behind by The Child. His tail drooped and his whole demeanor spoke of disquiet. I listened to his paws scuffing the carpet as he went into The Child’s room and then detected the soft sigh of him settling down by her bed.

  After a minute, only the breathing of three sleepers reached my ears.

  The nights festivities over, I settled back down on the top of the couch and tucked my tail around my front paws. This is one of the proper positions for communing with one’s ancestors.

  All cats have the memories of our ancestors, and they raise us as much as our mothers do when we are kittens. We fight, hunt, and play under the watchful gaze of family that stretches back to the mists of the primeval. They instruct us when we are young, and we learn to commune with them as we attain maturity.