And Crawling Things Lurk

Carl pushed past Don and drew the sheath knife from his waist. Jackie held Muri’s slight form while Carl worked with his knife, sawing and slicing through the tough strands. Don stood over them with his flashlight and pistol sweeping back and forth, balancing his attention between their progress and the shadows around them that held a peril he was just beginning to comprehend.

“I saw it,” Carl mumbled as he worked, “and I still can’t believe it. How can it be? What could possibly have –? It can’t be. Cross-species is one thing, but, Christ, this is cross-phyla. DNA might…it’s impossible. It goes against everything I’ve ever learned or taught. I could spend the next fifty years trying to convince my peers...”

“...Jackie. Jackie!” Muri jerked awake in Jackie’s embrace.

“I’m here. I’m right here.” Jackie’s right arm was about her shoulders and holding her in a sitting position. “You’re okay, now. You’ll –”

The monster didn’t screech when it struck, no more than a stalking tarantula announces its intention as it leaps for the unwary mouse. She appeared out of the shadows above, though Don couldn’t even say from which direction. She just dropped there and perched again on the railing next to him. But she didn’t remain on one spot long enough for him to bring his gun to bear.

When she leapt past him to the floor of the catwalk, she waved her hands at him, and he felt the strands. They landed lightly, but when he tried to move his hands separately, they were bound firm. He made the mistake of trying to pull them from one hand with the other, and they stuck together. His pistol was still in his right hand, but his left was bound to it and partially across the slide. He fired anyway.

Her constant motion, leaping from one to the other, stringing her web over each as she passed, took her out of the aiming point, and the bullet ricocheted with a brief whine that was hardly noticeable against the thunder of the booming report. When the pistol’s slide slammed back with the recoil, the steel-like strands caught it just after it stripped the next cartridge from the clip and held it from sliding forward. His desperate struggles combined with his now unbalanced stance sent him tumbling to the floor against a bottle rack. The strands stuck the slide to his left hand that now adhered to his right wrist.

The creature landed beside Don and threw more strands on him, further entangling his arms. She sprang over Muri and the two men working to free her, and she draped more strands. Landing on the other side, she spun and cast her webs across them a few more times, then leapt back to the railing.

But Don hadn’t given up on his weapon. Working in the limited light of the two glow lights and the two flashlights getting kicked and rolling about on the plank flooring, he pushed and worked his left hand around enough to move the slide. Finally, with a satisfying click, the slide locked forward. It would fire, he was pretty sure, but his left hand was now glued to the slide and to his right hand. He doubted the slide would operate even as well as it did after the first shot. He had one shot, and she crouched on the railing right in front of him.

But before he could tilt his body enough to point his weapon at her – point blank range – she launched again, wrapping more strands around his arms and body as she went past, anchoring the gun down below what he needed for aiming, or even pointing. She landed back on the railing where she crouched on her feet spaced wide and laid more webs across Carl and Jackie.

The only noise in the place was from the four humans yelling and crying out in panicky fear and rage, and from the rustling, shuffling sounds the creature made with her feet and hands on the railing and floor. The thing into whose domain they had come was silent after her initial reaction to their intrusion.

“Aagh! Get this off o’ me!” Jackie yelled. “I’m –”

“Hold still! My knife’ll –”

“Jackieee!”

By pressing his shoulder against the rack, Don worked himself most of the way back to his feet. Hunching over, he strained to hold his hands high enough to get a view of his target over the top of the gun barrel even if he couldn’t line up the sights. By turning his body, he positioned his weapon until he was pretty sure it was pointed at her. Point shooting was iffy even in good circumstances, and he had only one shot. But would he get another opportunity?

Like the first shot, it was deafening in the enclosed space, and the fire of the discharge again sprayed light about the cellar like a flash of lightning. The hollow-point bullet from his forty caliber Glock, traveling at almost thirteen hundred feet per second, was capable of smashing a hole through her big enough to – but it missed.

It went close enough, though, to disrupt her from further wrapping up Jackie and Carl. And when she spun toward him, he noticed a rip in her dress on her side beneath her arm. Although he couldn’t see it in the dim light, he’d almost bet there was a burning, red crease showing through. He hadn’t missed completely, but he might as well have. His gun was jammed again with the slide open. He might be able to force it forward if he had time to work with it, but she wasn’t going to give it to him.

She rose out of her crouch and glared at him for a moment before taking a first step in his direction. He tried to raise his gun, but it was a useless gesture. His arms strained against the webbing, but that, too, was useless. He had regained his feet, so he could turn and run on his mostly unbound legs, but to where, and how far would he get? In his forced crouch, unbalanced and restricted even in his leg movements, all he could do was wait for her to come to him.

Her multiple black eyes held no expression, but her open mouth and the reaching fangs left no doubt as to her intentions. Her hands, again splayed like talons, grasped his shirt. He had hurt her, something she had seldom experienced during the past hundred and fifty years, and her cold-blooded efficiency was now tainted with hateful malevolence. No longer bothering to further encase him, she was ready to bite.

The small, dainty hand gripped his arm like a vise. Her other hand, relentless with inhuman strength, reached around behind his neck and pulled him forward and down, unmindful of his struggles. Her face was close enough for him to see his reflections in those glossy black eyes, eight images growing larger in the faint light as she pulled him ever closer.

The pipe that became a spearhead was only inches from Jackie’s face, held there by the mesh of strands encasing him. The palm of the hand holding it just a few inches below the joint of wood and steel burned like fire, and with his head held in that direction by more strands, he could see the film of blood coating the handle. But he also could see that where the blood smeared the wood, the strands had not stuck. Before he settled into a contemplative mood, accepting his fate as no longer opposable, Muri’s faint voice broke through.

“Jackie…Jackie….”

Then Josie’s voice broke in, “She’s still alive, Jackie – but that thing is going to get her. And, Jackie, when it does, it’s going to hurt her. Oh, Jackie, it’s going to hurt her so bad.”

He strained against the strands, and they gave some, but not enough. He worked his hand holding the spear around and down, then worked the spear upwards so the blood-smears spread to other strands, and they loosened. He pushed it up harder, forcing the point through the outer strands and smearing more blood on the inner ones. Then, when he worked the spear downward again, the sticky strands no longer held it, and it slid through the bloody strands, picking up more gore. He applied side pressure, and the honed edge of the blood-coated steel sliced through the strands covering his face. He worked it up and down again, slicing through more of the strands, each time gaining more freedom of movement, soon slashing away enough so he could lurch to his feet. Both hands worked their way down the shaft of the spear, raising the head above his head and smearing blood down its length, freeing it from the web. When he lowered the head of his monster killer to point at its target, the agony in his shoulder threatened to slow him down, but he replayed Muri’s voice in his mind followed by Josie’s dire prophecy and pushed the pain away.

In the dim light of the misdirected flashlight beams, with his peripheral vision Don noticed movement behind the thing that had him. He had to fight to tear his eyes from peering into those black orbs, and he looked up in time to see it was Jackie that had gotten to his feet. His spear was in his bloody right hand, and he reached out with his equally bloody left hand and managed a second grip on it. Clamping the butt beneath his right armpit, he lurched forward.

The thing held Don fast, and he felt the fangs touch his skin. But, before they penetrated deeper than the skin, she flung him aside and spun around at the sound of the heavy footsteps fast approaching. Just before the head of Jackie’s spear reached her, she jerked to her right, away from Don. But before she could leap away, Jackie compensated for her movement, adjusted his aim to point the spear straight at where her heart would lie if she were human, and rammed it into her.

Jackie’s momentum carried him forward after the spear met the resistance of the body that had the appearance of an old woman, but was not – not wholly. Because the angle of the lance was downward from Jackie with his greater height, the point of impact slipped lower before penetrating further. With both hands gripping the shaft of his spear, he drove forward, pushing the pipe he had honed to knife-like edges into her just below her breastbone, in the softer part of her torso. The spear penetrated, and it kept piercing and slicing its way in as he drove harder.

She met him with a screech similar to her initial challenge, but this one carried much pain, too, and he reveled in it. She grasped the shaft with her hands and stopped it from going deeper, but she couldn’t stop his driving force from pushing her light bulk back against the wall. When she slammed into it, she lost her grip on the blood-covered shaft, and it slid in farther, then, as he leaned into it, through her. He pulled her forward again, and, with all he could put into it with his burning and bleeding hands gripping the shaft and his shoulder screaming in agony, he lifted her on the spear and, driving forward with his legs pumping, slammed her back, embedding the spear into the wood of the beam framing the mansion door.

The monster thrashed and kicked in the air as its feet sought purchase on the floor just out of reach. It screeched and threw its head from side to side. It slammed its hands against the shaft that impaled it, and Jackie could feel it as he still held the butt end of his spear and supported her weight. He could feel the shaking of its struggles, and he recalled what it had done to Josie and Sarge, what it was going to do to Muri. He gave the spear another push even though the wood held it firm, and he felt the quivering of the thing’s dying as he had vowed.

Suddenly, it lashed out with its hand, and with incredible strength, crushing strength, it grasped his own left hand. He tried to pull it free, but it was too strong. Its grip tightened, and, with flashes of agony, he felt and heard the bones in his hand breaking. It pulled his hand, and agony exploded anew in his shoulder, but he was powerless to resist it.

Using its grip on Jackie’s tortured hand with which to pull itself, it slid its own body along the spear shaft, gnashing its teeth and snapping its fangs, and it pulled him from his end of the spear. With the pain in his shoulder and hands and the terror of its approach sending his head into a dizzying spin, his legs went out from under him. As he fell, his weight dislodged the spear from the beam, and they both flopped to the floor. But, still, it drew him closer, stretching its neck to reach toward him with its fangs, dragging him ever closer.

Don pushed on the slide of his pistol for all he was worth, but the strands gluing it to his hands held it firm. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carl struggle to his feet, freed enough from the strands she had thrown over him to be able to move about. Muri, also free, rose with him. Carl ran to him with his knife poised to slice through the webbing on his arms and gun. But when he saw how close Jackie was to the fangs, he diverted, dropping to his knees beside Sofia.

He grabbed her by the hair bun on the back of her head and drew his knife back to plunge it into her. But, even with the spear piercing her, her strength and reflexes were more than his. She withdrew one of her hands from Jackie’s head and grabbed Carl’s plunging knife arm by the wrist, stopping it in mid-strike. When she wrenched his forearm sideways, the bones snapping sounded like branches of a tree. The knife dropped from his hand, and she released her grip on his wrist when she shoved him, propelling him to sprawl across the floor.

Before Carl could scramble back to the fight, Sofia snatched Jackie’s head again, jerked it forward, and down. With cold efficiency, she buried her fangs deep into the flesh between his shoulder and neck.

After only a moment, she flung him away from her and resumed fighting the spear. She gripped it and pushed it back, sliding it out of her. But before it was free, she reared her head back and screeched again. It was that same, inhuman sound, but without so much power as it had at first. Her hands fumbled with the spear again, and she tried to push it farther out, but it didn’t move in her weakening grip. After a moment her hands dropped from it again. Her head drooped forward briefly, reared and screeched again, fainter still, then sagged forward and remained there as silent as those in the pit beside her.

Muri was the first to regain voice in two, long, endless wails. “Jackieee! Nooo!”

Carl picked up his knife and, dragging his maimed other arm beside him, turned back to free Don. Muri rushed past them and fell to her knees beside Jackie’s still form. The monster lay only inches from her, but she ignored it. Sobbing, she cradled Jackie’s head in her lap. With gentle hands, she brushed aside the tangle of hair flopping across his face and cupped his cheek.

The after-battle silence hung over the unholy place like a shroud. The acrid smoke of the two gunshots mixed with the foulness already permeating the dungeon, and almost made it bearable. Don felt as though reality had been swept away and that insanity and chaos flooded in to replace it. He thought he had accepted the nightmarish world Jackie insisted upon, but when faced with the reality of the fangs, the webs, and the horror filling the pit, he lost his ability to move. The strands fell from him to Carl’s knife, but he still felt as though he hung suspended between the real world and one of too dreadful possibilities.

His hand withdrew his cell phone from his pocket, and he saw four solid bars on the screen; he had a good signal, plenty strong enough to reach the outside world. But what could he say? With what words could he tell the world that it held things so far beyond what was generally believed? The evidence was still there, both lying nearby on the floor and filling the pit beside him. Even Carl, who had spent recent years searching out previously unknown and often bizarre creatures, struggled to believe what was before his own eyes. Maybe it would be better to just torch the place and allow the naïve to continue to believe they understood the world. But he knew he couldn’t do that. At least, with a man of Carl’s prominence beside him, there was a chance they wouldn’t be laughed away. But what could he say now? After tapping his phone a couple of times on his other hand, he slid it back into his pocket. Later, after they had talked, would be soon enough.

He moved with Carl toward the other two.

“Jackie, wa – wake u – u – up!” Muri’s sobs made her words all but unintelligible. “Please, wa – wake up!”

Tears welling from Muri’s eyes ran down her cheeks, a few diverting through the strands still across her face before dripping to Jackie’s upward turned face. When one landed on his eyelid, it fluttered and opened. His eyes took a moment to focus on her face held so close to his. Recognition opened them wider, and a smile touched his lips.

She looked up when Don and Carl knelt beside her. Carl eased his knife tip around her face enough to remove more of the strands.

Tears continued to stream down her face as she tried to speak, “I knew h – he’d sa – save me. Even before I h – heard him calling, I knew he’d come. He was a he – he – hero.”

Jackie’s eyes flitted back and forth as he peered into each of hers. Then, concern drew them together to form a crease between his bushy brows.

“Mu...Muri...okay?” The venom of Sofia’s bite had not been so precisely placed that it prevented him from vocalizing since it was not placed to paralyze but to kill.

Sobs prevented an audible answer, but Muri’s head nodding fast enough to fling more tears across his face and a grin stretching her lips conveyed her message.

An easy smile again softened the lines of pain etching his face and his focus rose to a point a little behind and above her. His voice, fighting its way past the venom was little more than a whisper, but they all heard it.

“...did it, Josie. I did it.”

The focus of his eyes stayed briefly on something beyond Muri, something the others couldn’t see. He said nothing further as his gaze came back to Muri’s face, but a smile curled the corners of his mouth. They remained that way after his eyes lost their focus and half-closed.

After a long moment, after she gave up waiting for the miracle of his return, Muri’s sobs became a wail, keening and eternal.