David Wong - This Book is Full of Spiders

He opened the front door. A business card appeared in his hand.

“Call me if you decide you want to talk more about this and save us both some time. Otherwise, I’ll be seeing you around.”

When I heard the Porsche growl past the house ten minutes later, I was still standing in my living room, staring at the door the detective had passed through. I was sweating like a bottle of beer at the beach.

I dug out my phone. Dialed John.

Voice mail.

It wasn’t the longest night of my life, but it was way up there. I’ve had my share of terrified, sleepless nights and I’ve developed a pretty good survival system involving nothing more than mental alertness exercises, positive thinking and amphetamines. Don’t worry, I have a prescription. Or at least the guy who sold them to me did.

I was in for a brutal crash later, but that was Day David’s problem. Night David was trying to stay alive. And, it worked. I was out on my porch when shafts of light started burning through the trees in my front yard, and I almost cried at the sight of it. It was the first time I could remember that I had seen two consecutive sunrises.

Ironically, at that point I was too jacked up to sleep. And not just from the orange capsules that were dissolving in my system. I had come up with a plan of action during my long wait. First, get the shit out of my toolshed and dump it somewhere. Maybe in the river. Then, get out of town for a while. Let all this blow over. Where would I go? Didn’t matter. I could do anything. Hitchhike to San Francisco and live on the beach. Join the circus. The where wasn’t important. I had been in a rut, that’s what I realized. I needed to shake things up. Lose this weight. Learn karate. Wait, did I accidentally take four of those pills instead of two? Wow.

It seemed like a good time for a shower. My laundry basket was still overturned. I lifted it up a few inches and stuffed all the clothes I was wearing under there. I made my way into the bathroom—

Molly barked. She was staring at the door and I heard a car pull up. I heard Creedence, and a look through the curtains revealed John’s old Cadillac. Thank Christ.

Footsteps on the porch. I yelled, “Don’t open the door yet, I’m naked. Give me one minute.”

The door opened behind me.

I turned and was face-to-face with Franky Burgess.

Franky opened his mouth. A thin stream of liquid squirted out as a greeting. I had the thought to throw up an arm to shield my face from whatever it was, but before the muscles could twitch into action there was a bang and a blueish flash. I felt the floor hit me in the back. I stared at the ceiling, ears ringing, vaguely realizing that the stuff Franky spat had combusted in midair with enough force to knock me on my ass.

I blinked, dazed. Franky stepped over me. He was carrying what looked like several red-and-white grocery bags in each arm. He went into the bedroom. From the floor I saw the Cadillac outside my open front door and had time to make the conscious decision to race out there and drive naked across America, before I felt the forearm close around my neck.

Franky, now with the strength of several Frankys, yanked me to my feet and marched me toward the bedroom.

Molly barked. She bounded toward us, past us, out the door, into the yard, into the distance, barking the whole way. She was not going to get help.

I could see into the bedroom now but couldn’t make sense of what was there. There were four huge, white, bleeding dead birds on my bed.

Chickens? Turkeys ?

I was trying to puzzle through the situation. Were these birds for me? Like a gift, or an offering? They were laid out and dripping blood on my sheets, like some Aztec sacrifice on an altar.

I said, “Uh, thank you for the turkeys, Franky. Is your name still Franky?”

“Shut up.”

Franky’s voice was muffled, like he was talking around a mouthful of food. He held me in place, both of us watching the bed intently for… what? Franky’s arm—the broken one—felt weird. Something long and dry snaking around my torso. I didn’t look down.

Movement on my bed. The sheet was rippling, like somebody had poked their fingers up from under the mattress and was wiggling them. Several somebodies. Dozens of fingers.

I heard fabric rip. A slit formed in the sheet and a tiny version of one of those spiders, no more than two inches long, crawled out. It went right for the nearest turkey. It was quickly joined by another. And another. Within seconds my bed was writhing with dozens of the spider larvae, like maggots on a slab of meat.

With every ounce of strength and adrenaline and terror I could muster, I twisted out of Franky’s grasp and spun toward the door. I made it into the living room before Franky tackled me. I twisted around and from a position flat on my back, punched him in the face as hard as I could. It felt like I broke my hand. He shrugged it off and pinned my arms, his legs straddling my chest. I looked right into his eyes, and saw the gaping stare of a terrified young man. He was hissing something at me, a whisper from deep in the throat. He leaned his face down close to mine. I couldn’t make out his words, they were just choking sounds like an old man on a respirator. He leaned closer. I could smell his breath.

“They are everywhere,” he hissed. “Do you understand me? They are everywhere .”

“Franky! Can you hear me? Get off me!”

Then, I saw it. When Franky opened his mouth, I was looking at the spider . Its tongue, where Franky’s tongue used to be, behind his teeth. It had simply taken over the lower half of his skull. I pictured the way its leg was able to glue itself to my shoulder and shuddered. The spider was a part of Franky now. Maybe the spider was Franky at this point.

Running footsteps, on the porch. Franky and I both looked and saw John hurl himself through the front door.

I screamed, “JOHN! IT’S A BREEDER!”

John didn’t stop. He hurdled the coffee table while screaming, “YOUR KEY! I NEED YOUR SHED KEY!”

Shed key? What was he doing? Borrowing my lawnmower?

“Listen,” Franky hissed, focusing back on me. I realized he was trying to talk through his parasite, and struggling to do it. “They’re everywhere. It could be anyone. Do you get it? Anyone .”

Franky screamed. A long, segmented thing came out from his mouth, out from the parasite hiding within. It looked like a black earthworm, but longer, with a little spike on the end like on a scorpion’s tail. I was expecting the thing to come down and sting me or something. Instead it curled up toward Franky’s own eye. Franky screamed again. The worm thing plunged into his eyeball.

I heard a small engine rev to life, from outside the house. I had the crazy thought that I’d see John racing around the house with my lawnmower, screaming, “Thanks for letting me borrow this!” before throwing it in his car and driving off.

Blood dripped down on me from Franky’s punctured eye. His hands found their way to my face and throat, clawing at me mindlessly. Fingers trying to pry open my mouth.

The engine sound was in the house now. Deafening. A shadow fell over us.

John.

Something in his hands, something loud.

The engine sound revved to a mechanical scream, then bogged down as if with effort. There was a sound like carrots in a blender. Wetness rained down on me.

The blurred metal teeth of a chainsaw ripped through Franky’s neck. John worked the machine down, rocking it back and forth as it tore through spine and muscle and tendons, his hands streaked with red. Franky’s head fell free from his shoulders, his wet hair bonking me in the face.