Tom was nothing if not a curious child. So, when he came downstairs on the sunny Saturday and was told by his mother that his sister and father were at the pet shop, he was eagerly waiting to put his face up against the cage of whatever pet they were going to be returning with.
It was his sisters birthday, although technically she didn’t turn seven until Monday, and all she wanted was a pet, Now as the moment was drawing ever closer for them to return Tom was regretting that all he had asked for was one of those new Playstation’s, since he had got it he completed the one game he got with it and had not played it since.
The front door flung open and the warmth of the outside came in. It was an abnormally hot day in late June, as summer had decided to finally grace the English capital with something other than rain and chilly wind.
Standing triumphantly in the doorway, at the head of the oblong of sunlight that had come into the house was Abigail, hands on her hips and a big grin on her face. Standing behind her was father. He carried a small plastic box that was covered in a towel.
Tom should probably have noted at this time that his mother had disappeared. She knew exactly what Abigail had gone to get and knew that neither Tom nor her would like it one bit.
Peter, the father issued Abigail to go in and then shut the door with his heel as he walked in himself. The bang from the door was loud and Abigail rounded on her father to chastise him for “frightening the little fella” something she instantly forgot when she started running around the house with excited screams. First she ran to the kitchen and slapped the table top “put him here!” she shouted telling her father that she needed to clean a space for him in her room as she run upstairs, the heavy footfalls followed by some made up song about clearing a space for her new pet.
Tom waited in the kitchen with quiet excitement as his father came in and placed the container on the table
“Don’t take the towel off, you’ll scare it” Peter said, leaving to get some more things from the car.
“I wont” Tom said and watched his father go out the kitchen, turn into the hallway and then open the front door. Once he was down the patio Tom turned to inspect the cage. He crept closer, until he was mere inches from it, staring at the towel as if he could see through it. He wondered what was inside. Too quiet to be a hamster, or rat, maybe one of the other rodents he had seen last time he was there, but he did not think so. The cage was too small for a bird and he knew it could not be a lizard because Abigail didn’t like them.
“What are you doing?” Abigail said from behind him, before Tom could reply she went on “It’s my pet, you aren’t allowed to play with him”
“Who say’s I want to play with your stupid pet!” Tom argued
“Well you can’t anyway, he’s mine” She crossed her arms defiantly, but she was still excited, and wanted to show off her new thing “Do you want to see it”
Tom went to nod, but then looked at the cage again, suddenly, he felt like the presence behind the towel was not a friendly one. Something had hit him with a sudden dread. Shaking of the feeling he nodded.
Abigail slowly pulled the towel up and once it was off the sudden fear Tom had explained itself.
A spider.
Not a small one either, but one of the large, fat, ugly ones with fur all over its body and great glistening eyes that glared viciously at Tom. A Tarantula
Tom swore, asking why she had bought that and opting to use a vernacular that he normally only used at school. Peter was behind him though and chided him instantly.
The spider seemed to laugh at Tom after he was told off and he hated it more because of that. No matter where he moved or what he did, it stared at him, as though it had heard his thoughts and knew of his fear.
Their mother eventually came into the kitchen, squirming and keeping her distance
“Oh it’s horrid” she said “Take it up to your room now Abi”
Abigail happily obliged and Peter and she took it upstairs jollily whilst Tom and Mary stood in the kitchen looking at the table as though it had been sullied.
That night at diner and Tom had not been able to shake the horrible thoughts from his mind. Even the birthday cake that Abigail had was not enough to cheer him up.
Despite the creature being upstairs he felt it had still been staring at him, probably climbing the walls of its enclosure trying to break out so that it could catch him. The image of when it was first unveiled and it raised its front legs as it eyed him burnt into the forefront of his thoughts, as though it was trying to embrace him in a deadly grip.
“Are you happy with your gift” Mary asked Abigail, clearly not happy herself.
“Yes thank you he’s amazing” she said, still shovelling cake into her mouth
Tom decided to input “It’s hideous, I hate it”
There was clearly a mix of emotions at the diner table, Peter laughed, Mary said nothing but looked slightly ashamed, probably because she felt the same, and Abigail looked outright offended
“He’s lovely!”
“It’s evil” Tom argued, knowing he had no real argument, he just was not happy with it “Does it have to be in the house?”
Peter decided to be the voice of reason and argued that since it was not in his room and he did not need to look at it then he should ignore it. But Tom could not.
That night He and Abigail were sent to bed at the same time, Abi being allowed to stay up a little later because it was her birthday celebration. When Tom walked past her door, she held it open and stuck her tongue out at him. But Tom looked passed her and into the corner of her room. There the Spider stood; staring at him, with its eyes glistening softly in the lamp light, and it followed his every step with a malice filled stare.
When he tried to sleep, Tom’s mind was filled with horrible images of giant spiders and his nightmares turned the bedsheet into an ensnaring web that wrapped itself around him, encouraged to bind him by his struggles.
On Sunday, Abigail spent most of the day in her room, playing with her new friend. Tom was grateful that he did not have to hear her going on about it, but regardless it was still at the forefront of his mind. He tried taking his mind of it with games and TV even chores, but nothing helped.
Eventually when it came to diner Abigail was told by her parents that she had to spend some family time, rather than take it upstairs like she wanted to do and had done with lunch and breakfast.
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Tom said nothing as they ate, rather Abigail started the debate this time “Fluffy doesn’t like you very much” She said, She had told them all at lunch when she had come down to collect her sandwich that her new pets name was now Fluffy.
“Like I care” Tom said, but he did, he already knew that the creature had it out for him, and now it was confirmed, even though he knew the spider couldn’t talk, and there was no way for Abigail to get from it how it felt, Tom still knew this was confirming his fears. “It’s a stupid little spider, anyway, why would I want it to like me”
“Don’t call him stupid” Abigail retorted, and Peter tried to calm them both down, before an argument broke out.
“Who wants left over cake?” He said but both children said they weren’t hungry.
“Fluffy is lovely and you’re the stupid one”
“I’m not stupid, it’s that f-“ Tom almost swore again but corrected himself “Silly spider is the stupid one and it’s just ugly”
Abigail stood up and stomped over to the door, she turned and stared at Tom “If you don’t stop insulting Fluffy then his mummy is going to eat your tongue out, then you can’t insult anyone” She finished this by sticking her own tongue out and blowing a wet raspberry at Tom.
“Well if you don’t want me insulting it then keep your door shut so I don’t have to look at its stupid face” Tom shouted, but Abigail was already stomping upstairs
“She’ll just have to eat your eyes too then!” came the response and then her door slammed shut.
Tom tried to sleep that night, but he was being haunted again by images, not of giant spiders this time, but hundreds and hundreds of tiny ones, little baby spiders that swarmed over him and clustered on his eyes. He saw them in his dreams as one then two then hundreds clawed into his vision, until everything was black. He writhed in his sleep and managed to fall of his bed, when he hit the floor he woke up.
In his groggy state, still half asleep, and absently rubbing at his eyes, he briefly caught a site of something under his bed. The whole underside of his bed was netted with spider webs and fresh wriggling sacks of half dead things. The site shocked him awake and suddenly he noticed his walls were covered in hundreds of spiders all different sizes and types, watching him. He panicked and leapt under his covers. He cried there, rocking himself back and forth, pulling the covers tight around him so that he was safe from the outside.
He felt like he would be there all night trying to hide from them, but soon enough he was asleep.
The next morning his mother called up for him to get ready for school, and fresh from sleep he had forgotten his nightly haunt. Jumping out of bed full of energy and grabbing his bag and shoes from beneath his bed, no webs in sight. He didn’t remember until he was at his door, and a quick look behind confirmed that nothing was there. Merely nightmares he told himself and went down to finish getting ready for school. As he walked past his sisters’ room, the door ajar he looked in to see the spider staring back “stupid thing” he said and continued downstairs.
His fears did not spare him at school and any time his mind absently wandered from his schoolwork he would see another of the eight-legged things silently waiting. More he thought than had ever been around before.
When he got home, he decided to say nothing, Tom had, had enough of spiders and didn’t even respond when Abigail tried to goad him on by talking about Fluffy. After dinner, he excused himself and went to bed straight away. Just wanting the day to be over with but he knew sleep would most likely elude him further.
He was right. As he tried to sleep he couldn’t, he stayed awake all night, staring up at the glow in the dark stars that he had on his ceiling. He was awake long enough to hear the rest of his family go to bed and all the lights turned off. Tom fell asleep a short while after that not that he knew when, but he was woken very shortly after.
It started with his bed shaking once, this is when Tom woke up, still in a semi-lucid state, not sure what had happened or if he had felt anything at all. Then the bed moved again, rocking like a boat on tumultuous waves. It went on like this until he was fully awake, then it stopped abruptly.
He stared out into his room, checking both left and right to see if anything else had moved or seeking out some clue as to what was happening. Then he saw one. A long thin leg protruded from the bottom of his bed, reaching out cautiously, and then another, eventually eight large legs were moving out from underneath his bed, when each clawed foot found purchase on the floor the leg would rise up on its inverted joint until all the legs had done this and it was ready to stand.
The bed was hoisted up and slid forwards, rattling into his room and clattering loudly as one of the legs broke and the mattress slightly slid off, resting awkwardly up against a chest of drawers. Tom turned around in horror and behind him stood a gargantuan spider, shaking itself off from having just lifted the bed off from its bulk. Each terrifying feature of an arachnid was there, on full display for Tom only on a much larger scale. The cold unloving eyes, shiny and many, the skin thick with jutting black wiry hairs, the body round and beastly, quivering and leading to a protruding spike at the end, wet with web, a small amount of the white sticky stuff clinging to the end.
Tom screamed and scrambled for the door. The creature recoiled at first but then began to give chase, delicately manoeuvring over the bed. Tom exited the room and ran down the hall towards the stairs. As he looked back, the creature had followed him, exiting his room with ease and rounding on him in the corridor. Though its mass was too large for the room, it still managed to pursue with an awkward grace, legs jumbled in all directions, one rose up by its face and pushing against the wall, another still in the doorway to his room and another yet curled up beneath the spider as though it was not needed.
Tom went to go downstairs, but as he turned, he saw into Abigail’s room. Her pet was staring back at him as it always did and Tom made a desperate bolt through her door, as the giant spider lunged at him. They both crashed as they landed, Tom smacking his body into the unit Fluffy lived atop, then grabbing the cage and turning around to fall on the floor winded, cradling the cage on his lap to hold out before him and deter the monster from attacking. He hoped. Whereas the giant spider crashed into the banister he had been standing near. Its body crumpling as its legs scrambled to right itself.
Tom was crying frantically; aware he had now forced himself into a corner on a gamble that he was now certain would not work. He then heard Abigail laughing and turned to look at his sister.
Abigail was standing on the bed arms folded behind her, he could just about make out her smile through his tears and the way the light from her bedside table was casting thick shadows across her.
“See… I knew you wanted to play with him” She said “You just had to ask” she finished her sentence with a short playful giggle that terrified Tom.
He then saw the other things in the room. From the ceiling, by Abigail’s bed hung two large sacks, woven from web, one was still, just softly swinging whilst the other was moving frantically as whatever was inside struggled to get out. Tom felt like he was watching this for ages before it slowly stopped moving and whatever was inside lost its battle. Once it had stopped Abigail reached out and pushed one, it swung and smacked into the other with a soft thud and they began swinging like a pendulum.
Tom rubbed away the tears with the back of his sleeve as he stared at them, knowing exactly what was inside but needing confirmation “Mum… Dad?” The sacks didn’t move, save for the swinging side to side that Abigail had started.
“They wanted to play too” She said, another giggle.
Tom felt like he’d been dropped into a bottomless pit, the sudden shock of sadness had taken the air from his lungs and all other feeling from his body, leaving only a shallow pool in his stomach that churned like he had acid reflux and he just wanted to be sick and get it all out of him. Then he realised someone, something was tussling his hair like his father used too. He turned slowly and was staring directly into the face of the giant spider. It had one leg raised and placed on his head which it rocked back and forth through his hair, it then pulled its small clawed foot down over his left eye, it pushed him back against the unit he was leaning against with significant strength.
Abigail stepped of the bed and walked over to him, she stood next to the spider so that Tom could just about see her with his right eye.
“She’s going to eat your eyes first” Abigail said, still smiling “Then your tongue. But don’t worry” She brought her hands forward from behind her back and held up to him a ball of pink thread and a long needle “Because I’ll stitch you back up” another giggle and then the spider began and Tom screamed until the darkness came and his ability to scream was robbed from him.
Some people say they’ve seen the young girl who walks around with her brother. How the two of them will sit at bus stops or on low walls as they walk around. The boy dutifully following his sister as she leads him by hand, for he cannot lead himself; his eyes, his mouth both sewn shut with pink thread. As for the house, people began to question why Peter and Mary stopped turning up for work, and of course eventually they were no longer paid and once they weren’t paid, eventually the bills took everything and the house was emptied to be sold on… but the spiders? The spiders stayed behind.