House of Spiders

They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. She started to pray, it was all she could will herself to do -- her voice in a low whisper for fear the little beast might hear it.

("Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you . . .")

Finally, the spider lifted its forelegs up and then down again. It seemed to be gloating, laughing at her!

("Damn it Girl, MOVE," she screamed at herself. "Just stand up and get out of the tub.")

Suddenly, everything went black. Her heart jumped against her chest.

("OH GOD! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LIGHTS?")

It was a black out. It had to be. The house was completely dark, and the timing couldn't have been worse! She was still trapped in her tub, unable to move a muscle, only now she couldn't see a damn thing either! She squinted and peered though the blackness. She could barely make out the white tiles on the facing wall, and the tub faucet, but she couldn't tell if the spider was still there. Her eyes darted everywhere, thinking it might have moved.

("WHERE IS IT?")

Suddenly, she felt something crawling down her right breast. Terrified to the point of hyperventilating, she slowly lowered her eyes and to her relief, realized that it was only a bead of water trickling down. Her eyes darted over to the spider again, or at least the spot were it was last seen before the lights went out. Growing accustomed to the darkness, she could definitely see something on top of the faucet now. It WAS the spider. The damn thing hadn't moved an inch!

Slowly, Deborah's arms slid down into the water. The darkness had somehow emboldened her, or maybe it was just that she couldn't see the damn thing's beady eyes staring at her anymore, but it still took all the will she could manage just to move her arms. Keeping her own eyes glued to the little beast, she brought her hands together between her legs, and turned them up, trapping some of the water in her palms. Then at the count of three, she splashed the water against the opposite wall, and saw the dark shape tumble into the tub.

Deborah immediately sat up, splashing water everywhere. She almost tripped over the edge of the tub as she stumbled out. She found a towel, quickly wrapped it around her wet body, then raced out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

There was little time to get over her shocking encounter. Gripping the towel with one hand, she used the other to feel her way to the bedroom. Twice she bumped into something hard and cursed, but finally she managed to make it to the window and pull the curtains open to allow moonlight from the outside to fill the room. The first thing Deborah noticed was that all the homes on her street were still lit -- all of them except for her house!

"Great," she whispered to no one, "the circuit breakers must have been tripped"

She dried herself off, then quickly put on the panties and silk robe she had laid out on the bed. She tried the phone, but that wasn't working either. When she first moved in, Mr. Ryerson showed her where to find the breaker box -- in the basement, between the furnace and water heater.

Deborah was still terrified about going down there, but if there was one thing she learned from what had just happened with the spider in her tub, it was just how crippling her phobia could be. All her life, she avoided having to face it. She didn't go on camping trips or hikes for fear that a spider might crawl into her sleeping bag. She always tried to avoid dark, musty places, like attics and cellars because she knew they would be there, lurking and waiting for her.

Now they were in HER home! They had found her, but and she wasn't going to let them rule her domain! She became angry. Grabbing a flashlight out of her night table drawer, she decided to go back to the bathroom and settle THAT score first, then go down to the basement and re-set the switches in the breaker box.

Slowly, hesitantly, she opened the door about a foot and slipped past. The spider was still in the tub, but it had managed to climb out of the water. Now the little beast was trying to crawl up the slippery wall tiles to a small window ledge above. Deborah opened the drain and waited until all the water was gone before turning the faucet on again. The spider hadn't made much progress in its attempt to ascend the wall tiles. She pulled the lever to activate the shower, then turned the showerhead upward, toward the evil creature.

The water pressure quickly forced the spider off its perch and into the pool below. It struggled, flailing its eight legs in a grotesque way, trying to grip onto anything to pull itself out of the water, but there was nothing to take hold of. Eventually it was sent streaming down the drain, through the pipes, and far away from her bathroom.

Deborah breathed a sigh of relief. She was tempted to step under the shower and rinse the soap off her body, but she was still too afraid to climb into the tub. Maybe it was still alive, holding onto some hair lodged in the drain, waiting for the right moment to pull itself back up and seek its revenge.

The thought made her skin crawl!

She knew it was just her phobia, making the situation much worse than it really was, but she also wanted to go down to the basement and get the lights on while she still had the nerve, so she shut the shower off.

Leaving the bathroom, Deborah made her way through the dark house to the basement. The short walk down the hall seemed like a mile. When she finally reached the door, she paused, took a deep breath, and opened it. The long flight of steps looked even more menacing in the dark. The empty web still hung in the corner, undisturbed. She felt the familiar tightness in her stomach. She tried the light switch, just in the hope that . . . nothing.

"Spiders are quite harmless, ma'am," she whispered to herself, repeating what the exterminator told her over the phone. She almost laughed.

Drawing a long breath, she slowly took her first step, then another, and another. The steps creaked underneath her bare feet, announcing her presence to anything that might be listening. Passing through the doorway at the bottom step, she was mindful to stay clear of the web that hung above. The basement was a grody place, much like an old root cellar, dank and rife with mildewed dust that sifted downward whenever a body traversed the kitchen floorboards above. It was the only part of the old house she disliked. There were boxes stacked everywhere and pieces of old furniture that Mr. Ryerson had promised to move out, but never got around to.

She carefully navigated her way through the maze and around to the back of the stairs while flashing the light nervously in all directions. She saw another web stretched between two pipes. A damp chill suddenly overwhelmed her. Deborah pulled the belt tighter around her robe, then moved on, wishing she had thought to put on something a little more appropriate for this grim journey.

One turn to the right and she was behind the stairs. There were more spider webs now, many more. So many, in fact, that she couldn't believe what she was seeing -- in corners, on the walls and even thicker masses of sticky silk festooned between rafters above! Their larders were clotted with tiny silk-wrapped victims, an ever-ample feast; enough to feed a large army. Some of the drained little bundles had already been cut loose and rained down upon the basement floor like grisly confetti. Deborah could hear that familiar little voice inside her head screaming at her to run, but she refused to listen to it. She was not going to run this time and let the fear control her actions.

Facing her from the opposite wall, the furnace and water heater stood like a pair of darkened sentinels. Somewhere, hidden in the shadows, the breaker box hung on the wall between them. Drawing a breath, she shined her light forward to bring them into view, and made another grim discovery.

The box hung in the midst of a vast sticky chaos of webbing that crisscrossed the space between the furnace and water heater. Deborah didn't see any spiders, but like the rafters, there was plenty of evidence dangling there to prove that this space was a veritable hub of arachnid activity.

She pointed the light into the center of the spider colony and peered into it. The door on the breaker box was usually left open, and the switchboard visible enough to see that every one of them had been tripped. That was easy enough to fix. Simply reset each switch to the "on" position, and then get the hell out.

The only catch was, she would have to reach into the web to do it!

Deborah felt herself move closer. Her mind was cluttered and disoriented by her fears, but something deep within, her rational side perhaps, was telling her body to finish what she came down here to do. She was within inches of the web. Her hands were shaking terribly, but she managed to set the flashlight down and pull the loose sleeve of her robe all the way up past her shoulder to bare her arm.

("All right . . . you can do this. Just reach in there and flip the switches.")

Taking another breath, she slipped her hand carefully through the thin sticky strands of spider web. She didn't want to touch them. She didn't want to rouse the spiders. She turned her head away and closed her eyes, her heart beating like drum now against her chest, sweat beading out through the pores of her flesh as she stretched the whole length of her arm into the dark silky mass. For a desperate moment, she couldn't find the box. Squeezing the bunched sleeve against her shoulder, she leaned forward until the web touched the side of her cheek, then stood on her toes and tried to keep her balance, her fingertips searching frantically in the darkness.

Her hand brushed a web strand, then another, and another, signaling the occupants. Deborah imagined their bristled legs, all thinly hinged angles, testing the silks. She could almost feel the multitudes of minute gems, the eyes of tiny monsters, gleaming, watching. She froze in fear and in awful fascination -- caught with her naked arm in the midst of a lethal and alien world. Then her fingers found the switch panel. Closing her eyes again, she ran her hand along the row of breakers and flipped each switch. After the last circuit was reset, Deborah quickly pulled her arm out, stepped back about six feet and sank down to her knees, trembling.

She remained there for some time, until her hands stopped staking and her breathing became more controlled. She felt a few strands of silk clinging to her arm and quickly brushed them off in disgust.

Grabbing the flashlight, she finally rose to her feet and looked around. Re-setting the breakers obviously didn't work, because she had turned the light switch on at the top of the steps before going down, and the basement was still dark, which meant the whole house was dark also.

("Damn it! All of that for nothing!")

There was no way Deborah could stay another night, not after finding all these spider webs in the basement. There could be hundreds of them crawling all over the place! Her only option now was to pack what she could and check into a hotel.

("Tomorrow, that exterminator will be here, and the landlord is going to have a cow when he hears about this, but at least everyone will believe me now. In the meantime, I'll get an electrician over here too. I'm not coming back to this house until the lights are working and every spider is gone.")

As Deborah stood there contemplating what to do, she became aware of dry, scurrying sounds all around her. It was soft at first, then it grew louder, closer. It sent shivers running down her spine and the goose bumps popping on her arms. She backed away slowly, but she had no idea where to retreat to, for there was no discernable source.

Then suddenly, a movement off to her right caught her attention. She turned the flashlight on it. A brown spider, with a smooth, fat body and long spindly legs scurried out from behind a box. Another followed, then another, and another. Deborah screamed and dropped the light. It clattered on the gritty the floor and went out, plunging the room into darkness. She fell to her knees again and groped for it. The noise grew even louder, the sound of hundreds of tiny little legs clicking across the concrete. When her fingers found the light, she tried the switch. Nothing. She shook it frantically until the bulb fluttered to life. By then, the spiders were scurrying everywhere, dropping from the ceiling, covering the floor of the basement like a carpet, and blocking her path to the stairs. There were not hundreds, but thousands of them! Some as big as teacup saucers, some not even half that size, but no less menacing. All of them had the same dark brown body with a bulbous back end, the long spindly legs, and a thick outer skin that made them almost impossible to kill.

She backed toward the wall, a primeval panic overtaking her as she groped for

the door latch into the crawl space. It was her only way of escape. Deborah remembered there was a window in there. If she could open it and somehow squeeze through, then she would be safe outside. Her fingers fumbled with the latch, unable to make it turn, while the spiders formed a circle around her bare feet and closed in. At last, she regained some control of her shaking hands, just enough to get the door open and jump through.

The crawl space was too small for her to stand up in, and the floor was only dirt that hadn't seen the light of day since the early 1950s when the house was first built. The air had a thick, musty smell, like an ancient tomb. Deborah pulled her robe tighter and crawled on her hands and knees toward the window, while trying to keep the dust and cobwebs (and who knew what else) out of her hair from the floor rafters above. The opening was frightfully small, but she thought she could manage it. When she got closer, she cursed,

"Shit!"

The latch was broken off, and the window itself, had been sealed ages ago with putty. Looking back, she could already see dozens of spiders crawling around the entrance to the crawlspace. Soon there would be hundreds in the room with her, just like there were in the basement. She took the flashlight and began beating at the filthy glass until it shattered into many pieces.

Setting the light down, she quickly slipped her robe off and, wrapping it around her hand, brushed as much of the broken glass away as she could. Then she put the robe back on and pulled the belt as tight as she could. Poor Deborah was nearly in hysterics now. She could imagine what her neighbors would say if one of them happened to see her crawling out of her own crawlspace window wearing nothing but a little silk robe and panties!

Looking back, she saw the first spiders swarming over the opposite wall from the crawlspace door. She turned back to the window and thrust her arms through first, then her head. The fresh air against her face was a welcoming feeling, but it was immediately apparent that getting the rest of her body out wasn't going to be as easy.

Lying flat on her stomach, she began inching her way forward. Just as she expected, the opening was extraordinarily tight, but once her shoulders were free, she was able to brace her arms against the sides of the house and wiggle forward until her breasts popped through. She gasped, finally being able to catch her breath after the terrific squeeze.

Pushing away from the house with her hands now, her trim belly slid out of the window fairly easily, but when her hips touched the inner edges, Deborah knew she was in trouble. She pushed as hard as she could, wiggling her bottom back and forth, up and down, trying to find some way to pop through. It was no use. As slender as she was, there was simply too much butt and not enough window.

Then Deborah made another horrifying discovery. Not only couldn't she squeeze herself out, but she also couldn't push herself back in either. She was REALLY stuck, hanging halfway out of the window, her hips wedged in as tight as a cork in a bottle, and the rest of her body still trapped inside the crawlspace!

"Oh God, NO!"

She could hear them filling the crawlspace, scuttling toward her, so she kicked and flailed her legs, pushed and squirmed with more frenzied panic than before. As she struggled the robe flared open, exposing her naked tits. Anyone happening by would have found the sight amusing, until he saw the shear terror in Deborah's eyes.

By then, she had given up trying to squeeze out of the window. Her only hope was to somehow get back in. The side of the house was overgrown with clumps of short, scraggily juniper bushes. With a grimace, she thrust her hands into them and tried to ignore the little stickers as her fingers searched for something to hold onto. Then she pushed, with all her strength. She twisted her hips, rubbing them painfully against the hardwood frame, willing herself to fit back in by some miracle.

Then she felt her hips inch backward a little, and with a sigh of relief, she continued to push and work her hips until they were finally free. It only took a fraction of effort now to get the rest of her body through the window, she did it so fast she nearly tore her robe off.

Kneeling in the crawlspace again, Deborah pulled what was left of the robe around her and turned, just in time to see the spiders, hundreds of them, closing in less than three feet away. She screamed, then without thinking tried to rise to her feet and bumped her head hard against one of the floor rafters.

She barely had enough time to crawl away to the far corner of the crawlspace. Sitting there with her back pressed against the wall, her robe open around her breasts, and her blonde hair dripping with blood, Deborah watched in horror as the swarm overtook the window, blocking her only escape. They were also crawling all over the flashlight, which she had left behind in haste.

She noticed a spot about six feet to her left where the wall had crumbled away, exposing the earth behind it -- and what appeared to be a hole. Suspiciously, that was the only place the spiders hadn't reached yet -- as if a path were deliberately left for her.

Was this some kind of a trap? Could these damn things really be that smart?

She suddenly felt a burning sensation on her thigh and noticed that a small spider had just bitten her, it tiny fangs still embedded her flesh. She jerked her leg back and brushed it off, then stomped its little body into the earth with the heel of her foot. Trap or not, she had to do something, or else she would be eaten alive. She quickly crawled over to the broken wall and the gaping, black hole yawning ominously at her.

As Deborah got closer, she held back a bit, a twinge of fear shooting through her body. It looked like a burrow of some sort that measured about three feet in diameter. What animal could possibly have dug this, she had no idea, nor could she tell how far back it went, or if there was even an opening at the other end!

She had no choice now. The spiders were closing around her again, forcing her to move forward. About six feet in, she realized this was a horrible mistake. Just like the window, the hole was smaller than she thought, giving her very little room to maneuver in. Thrusting her arms in front, she began pawing at the dirt while wiggling her body forward. She felt another bite on her ankle and kicked it off, then a spider tried to crawl into one of the leg holes of her panties. She was in hysterics, and screamed and kicked, scraping her knees against the sides.

Deborah wished she had stayed in the crawlspace. At least there, she could have made a break for it. Now she was trapped in this tight space about six feet underground. It was like being buried alive in a grave, but the claustrophobia wasn't really the issue with hundreds of spiders crawling after her. It was the spiders she feared the most. She feared them more than The Devil. The thought of something with eight hairy legs touching her; the thought of dozens of them hiking up her body like tiny Sherpa guides, confronting her with their beady-eyed reality, was more than she could bear.