Spray Lakes
Why is it that the smallest pebble always feels like a boulder when it’s in your shoe? Hamsa Gil knocked the rock out of her shoe, catching it as it fell. The foul little thing had been rubbing her toe all morning. She tossed the offending rock away before placing her shoe back on.
“You will enjoy camping mere dila ka pyara,” Hamsa repeated her husband’s words under her breath. Behind her was the monstrosity of a pickup and camper trailer Samir had purchased two weeks ago, all to drag his family out into the wilderness where they could be eaten by a pack of marauding bears. Samir had taken their daughter, Priam, to the lake in order to catch their dinner. Her youngest child was currently running around the campground with his hockey stick. “That boy is going to hit himself with that stick one day. Knock out all his teeth.”
As Hamsa picked her cup of tea off the hood of Samir’s truck, she heard the rapid crunching of rocks under her son’s shoes coming down the dirt path between camping spaces. Sandeep’s rich brown skin was dusted with a fine patina of grey dust, beads of sweat running down his face creating streaks in the dust. He swung his hockey stick back and forth before him, keeping a green tennis ball in constant motion as he ran.
“Be careful Sandee.”
“I will Mama,” Sandeep called back as he rounded a corner in the path and disappeared from view. Hamsa knew that her son, like all twelve-year-old boys, would have every intention of keeping his promise, but would be overcome with hormone-driven bouts of insanity the moment his mother was out of sight.
She let out a weary sigh and returned to her endeavour of lighting a fire in the round steel fire pit in the middle of their campsite. Samir would want a fire going to cook the fish they catch. Hamsa pictured her hapless city-raised husband buying fish from another camper, admonishing their daughter to ‘not tell Mama’.
Stolen story; please report.
“Holy Mother of God!” The sudden, terrified scream ended her brief moment of levity. Hamsa dropped the log she had been holding and hesitantly stepped onto the major path to get a clearer field of vision. More screams came from around the trees and vehicles filling the campground. She could not see what was causing the panic but could hear screams and commotion.
Hamsa’s blood ran cold, her stomach twisting in terror at the unknown. She turned and called in the direction her son had taken, “Sandeep! Sandeep!” Her frightened calls turned into an unintelligible scream as a monster scuttled around the tents across from her and into the path. The terrifying spider, the size of a large man and processing a face distorted in wild madness. “Sandeep, RUN!” Hamsa began backpedalling towards the truck, and keeping with the twisted laws of nature that govern such times, she stumbled over a rock and fell backwards. Horrified screams tore through her throat as the spider loomed over her, spreading his jaws wide.
A large grey blur knocked the spider aside, causing it to stumble over her. Hamsa began flailing madly at the sickening underside of the spider with her fists and feet. The barbs on its chitinous exoskeleton gouged into her skin. The monster’s screams mixed with animal growls from a second source.
Hamsa felt her right foot grabbed and she was pulled across the rough ground. In a panic, she began kicking at whatever was clutching her.
“Jesus lady, stop kicking me,” the female voice caught Hamsa by surprise as she was tugged out from under the spider. The pretty girl released Hamsa’s foot and helped her stand. The girl was shorter than she, but compactly muscled, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, and splattered in blood. “Get out of here.”
Hamsa staggered away, turning to look back at her attacker. The spider thrashed down the path, working to dislodge the wolf on its back. The wolf snarled as the creature struggled under it and continued to bite down on the back of the spider’s head. The girl ran past the stunned woman and into her camp, where she snatched up the hatchet Samir had used to cut firewood that morning.