David Wong - This Book is Full of Spiders

There isn’t a door, they just built up a brick wall over the opening, or locked me in a shipping container and bulldozed a thousand tons of dirt on top of it or sank it to the bottom of the ocean.

“HEY! HEY!”

I got one leg up—neither was restrained as far as I could tell—and kicked at the railing the cuffs were attached to. I had no strength in the leg. The railing didn’t give.

“HEY! GODDAMNIT!”

“Sir?”

A tiny voice. I froze.

Did I actually hear that?

I blinked into the darkness, stupidly, looking for movement. Somebody could have been sitting on my lap and I wouldn’t have seen them.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

“It’s just me.” Sounded like a little girl. “Can you be quieter? You’re scaring us.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Anna. Is your name Walt?”

“No. My name is David. Who’s Walt?”

“I thought they called you Walt earlier. When they brought you in.”

“No. Oh, okay. Wong. They probably said Wong, that’s my last name. David Wong.”

“Are you from Japan?”

“No. Who else is in here?”

“Just us. You me and Mr. Bear.”

“Okay, Anna, this is going to seem like a weird question but is Mr. Bear an actual bear or a stuffed bear?”

“He’s stuffed when grown-ups are around. Sorry if I scared you.”

“What are you doing here, Anna?”

“Same as you. We might be sick and they want to make sure other people don’t catch it.”

“Where are we?”

“Why didn’t you ask that question first?”

“What?”

“It didn’t make sense to ask me what I was doing here if you didn’t know where here was.”

“Are we in the hospital?”

No answer.

“Anna? You there?”

“Yes, sorry, I nodded my head but I forgot that you couldn’t see me. We’re in the old hospital. In the basement.”

“Then where is everybody? And what happened to the lights?”

“You can ask the spaceman when he comes by again. There were lots of them here before but everybody has been gone for a while.”

I didn’t need to ask who the spacemen were. Guys in contamination suits.

“How long has it been since they’ve come by?”

“I don’t know, I don’t have my phone. It was two sleeps ago. I’m sure they’ll be back soon. Maybe they close on the weekend.”

“Do you remember when they brought you here?”

“Sort of. They came and got my dad and they told us we couldn’t go home and moved everybody downstairs to the special hospital. And, that’s where we are now.” In a whisper she said, “I think we should be quiet now.”

“How old are you, Anna?”

She whispered, “Eight.”

“Listen to me. I don’t want you to be scared, but they left us here with no power, and no food, and no water. Now hopefully they’ll come back and take care of us but we have to make plans assuming they won’t.”

“If you drank all of your water you can have some of mine.”

“I… do I have water? Where?”

“On the table next to you.”

I reached over with my right hand and hit a row of shrink-wrapped bottles. I dug a bottle out and drank half of it and went into a coughing fit.

“Sssshhhhh. We really should be quiet. There’s a box of granola bars and stuff over there, too, but they’re not very good.”

“Why are we being quiet?”

“I think I hear the shadow man.”

I choked on my water.

“Shhhhh.”

“Anna, we—”

“Please.”

We laid there in silence, floating in still darkness like a pair of eyeless cave fish.

Finally Anna said, “I think he’s gone.”

“The shadow man?”

“Yes.”

“Describe him to me.”

“He’s a shadow with eyes.”

“Where did you see him?”

“Over there.”

“I can’t see where you’re pointing.”

“Over in the corner.”

“When? When did you see him before, I mean?”

She sighed. “I don’t have a clock.”

“What… uh, what did it do?”

“It just stood there. I was scared. Mr. Bear growled at him and he eventually went away.”

I had read somewhere that you could get out of handcuffs if you broke the bone at the base of your thumb. Or maybe just dislocated it? Either way I’d have to find out if my legs were strong enough to do that. The issue would then be trying to get the presumably locked door open one-handed. Maybe Anna could help.

I said, “Okay. We have to get out of this place.”

“They told us we couldn’t leave.”

“Anna, you’re going to find out soon that grown-ups aren’t always right. We… let’s just say that it’s better if we’re not here when that thing comes back. But if it does, I don’t want you to panic. I don’t think it’s here for you, I think it’s here for me.”

“Yes, that’s what he said.”

“He talked to you?”

She hesitated. “Sort of. I could hear him. I don’t think he had a mouth. Like Hello Kitty.”

“And… what did he say?”

“I don’t want to repeat it but I don’t think he likes you.”

I said nothing.

Anna asked, “Do you want Mr. Bear?”

“No, thank you.”

I pulled my hand as far out of the handcuff as I could, which wasn’t far. I could feel the little knob of bone stopping it, two inches down from the thumb. If I yanked it hard enough, surely it would scrape off that bone, and the blood would lubricate it. Be a matter of not passing out from the pain. And me not being too much of a pussy.

Metal scraping. I was about to ask Anna what she was doing when it registered that—

HOLY SHIT THAT’S THE DOOR THE DOOR IS OPEN

I sat up and threw aside the blanket. The room was bathed in light, a pair of powerful flashlights in the doorway, side by side like the eyes of a giant robot that had poked his head up through the floor. I was momentarily blinded by the light, but I squinted and looked to the corner, yelling, “Anna! Get—”

The words died in my mouth. The room I was in, now fully illuminated by the flashlights, contained a small bedside table, a toilet, a filthy sink, and one bed. Mine.

I was absolutely alone in the room.

On the floor was a tattered, filthy old teddy bear.

Gloved hands grabbed me, holding me to the bed. It was two dudes wearing decontamination space suits, but the suits weren’t white—they were black, and they had pads on the arms, torso and thighs like body armor. Their faceplates were tinted, so you couldn’t see the face of the wearer.

The cuff was removed from the bed rail and locked around my other wrist. Leg irons were placed around my ankles. I was dragged from the bed and marched down a long hallway lined with rusting steel doors just like the one I had been yanked through.

There were other people here, roused to life by the sound of us passing their cells. I heard an old man screaming for his wife, or daughter (“KATIE!!!! KAAAATIE! CAN YOU HEAR ME??!?”) with no response. I heard a scraping from behind one door, like somebody was clawing to get out. I heard someone beg for food, I heard someone beg for pain pills.

At the moment I passed a particular door, a male voice on the other side said, “Hey! Buddy! Hey! Open this door for me. Please. It’s my wife, my wife is in here and she’s bleeding. I’m begging you.”

I stopped.

“I’m here. What’s—”

The gloved hands clamped on me again to pull me along.

“Hey! Are you gonna help that guy? Hey!”

No answer from the guards. From behind me, the desperate voice begged and howled and wept.

The hallway came to a bend and continued to the right, but I was stopped in front of a TV screen that had been mounted on the wall. There was a speaker mounted below it, with a “push to talk” button. The screen blinked to life and there was a man in another decontamination suit, this one the normal, friendly white like you’d expect from a government agency. The face behind the clear Plexiglas mask was familiar to me, the neatly cropped silver hair and weathered wrinkles.