Nick Cutter - The Troop

The closet was wallpapered. Who the hell wallpapered a closet? The paper was torn in flimsy tatters. He tweezed a curl between his fingers. It ripped down the wall with a lovely zippering sound.

He placed the strip of wallpaper on his tongue. The ancient paste was vaguely sweet. He swallowed hungrily.

Lovely , the voice said. Just lovely. Now eat more .

Tim did as the voice asked.

Peeling and eating and peeling and eating.

The funny little voice was easy to obey. It didn’t ask for much and what it did request was simple to accomplish.

Just eat .

And eat.

And eat.

A body settled against the other side of the door. Tim licked his paper-cut lips; his tongue had gone thick and gluey with paste. He whispered:

“Max? Is that you?”

Silence.

“Newt? Ephraim?”

A song—sung in a low mocking warble:

The singer was plugging up the space between the door and the floor.

Shelley?

Tim’s precious bar of light vanished in heart-stopping chunks.

“No,” he moaned. “What are you doing? No, please, no, please don’t…”

He pushed his fingers under the door to dislodge the barrier but his fingertips met with resistance. Next came the whooonk ing sound of duct tape stripped off a roll. The last meager particles of light filching under the door disappeared entirely. Tim sat in total darkness.

He opened his mouth to beg for his light back. It was all he had , for God’s sake. The childlike plea died on his lips. Somewhere down inside of him—not too far down, either—he could feel that relentless squirming. His teeth snapped shut.

EAT .

The voice wasn’t so small or funny anymore.

Tim did as it said. He wept softly without realizing.

SHELLEY PLACEDthe tape back in the kitchen drawer. His heart was beating a little heavier than normal. His eyes were hot and watery with dull excitement. The Scoutmaster was making faint pleading noises from inside the closet.

Shelley tried very hard not to laugh. He did not think the Scoutmaster’s noises were very funny—Shelley didn’t find anything funny, really. Not ever.

He inhaled through the alcohol-soaked gauze over his mouth and nose. He understood the danger—he could practically see the microscopic eggs ringing the scotch bottle’s rim, the one Kent had drunk from last night. He saw the eggs hovering in the cool air above the dead man’s chest. This didn’t scare him. If anything, it excited him.

He glanced at his handiwork on the closet door. He’d wedged two dish towels underneath and taped them in place. Now the Scoutmaster had no light at all. If the other boys asked why he did it, he already had an excuse: Shelley had heard the Scoutmaster’s consumptive hacking and sealed him in so they wouldn’t all get what Tim clearly had.

Shelley opened the cabin door and slipped quietly outside. A fine band of golden light striped across the horizon. The others still slept round the fire.

He went round the side of the cabin and found a spiderweb suspended between the east-facing wall and the overhang: an intricate hexagonal threadwork hung with beads of morning dew.

Shelley plucked a strand of gossamer near the web’s center as if he were strumming the world’s most fragile guitar. A spider crawled out of a knothole in the log. Its legs pushed out of the hole as one solid thing, all bundled tight like the ribs of a shut umbrella. To Shelley, it looked like an alien flower coming into bloom.

This one was big. Its bell-shaped body was the size of a Tic Tac. Its color reminded Shelley of the boiled organ meat his mother fed their dog, Shogun. The spider picked its way nimbly across its web. It had mistaken Shelley’s gentle plucking for a trapped insect.

Shelley pulled a slender barbecue lighter from his pocket. He always carried one. Once, his teacher Mr. Finnerty had caught him burning ants near the bike racks after school. The fat carpenter ants had made weird pop! sounds as they exploded: like Shelley’s morning bowl of Rice Krispies.

Mr. Finnerty confiscated his lighter. He’d given Shelley a frosty, revolted look as if he’d just accidentally stepped on a caterpillar in his slipper. Shelley smiled back complacently.

He’d simply bought another lighter. He bought one every few weeks from different stores around town. He also bought mousetraps and ant traps. One time, a shopkeep had remarked: You must live with the Pied Piper, son, all these mousetraps you buy . That had concerned Shelley a little, and he’d made sure to steer clear of that store. It wasn’t wise to establish a pattern.

He flicked the ignitor. A wavering orange finger spurted from the metallic tip. Shelley worked carefully. It wasn’t a matter of savoring it—he’d done this so many times that his heartbeat barely fluctuated. He was simply methodical by nature.

He touched flame to the web’s topmost edges. The gossamer burnt incredibly fast—like fuses zipping toward a powder keg—trailing orange filaments that left a smoky vapor in the air. The web folded over upon itself like the finest lace. The spider tried to scurry up its collapsing web, but it was like trying to climb a ladder that was simultaneously ablaze and falling into a sinkhole.

Shelley idly wondered if the spider felt any confusion or terror—did insects even feel emotions? He sort of hoped so, but there was no way to be sure.

He set fire to the web’s remaining moorings. The web fell like a silken parachute with the spider trapped inside. Shelley harassed the spider through the grass, nipping it with the flame. He liked it best when he could sizzle a few legs off or melt their exoskeletons so some of their insides leaked out. He tried not to kill them. He preferred to alter them. It was more interesting. The game lasted longer.

He harried the spider until it scuttled under the cabin. He exhaled deeply and blinked his heavy-lidded eyes. Soon the spider would crawl back to its hole and build another web. Spiders were very predictable. When it did, Shelley might return and do it all over again.

Shelley scuffed his feet over the charred grass. It was best to leave no evidence. Take only photos, leave only footprints . He worked carefully, reflecting on the fact that this—what he’d just started with the Scoutmaster—was something new entirely. Something terribly exciting.

Spiders couldn’t tattle on you; mice couldn’t squeal—well, they could … but now Tim, he might just tell the boys what Shelley had done. But Shelley had an innate sense of leverage, a sixth sense he must’ve been born with; he understood that people in compromised positions were less believable. And even if the boys did believe Tim, or only a few of them—Max might; Newt definitely would—well, Shelley wasn’t sure that mattered now. He felt the pull of the island in his bones, a strong current anchoring him to it. The sun crawled over the water, and Shelley felt this day, which had only begun, might go on forever.

The boys had not yet stirred. When they did, talk would turn to tiresome matters: when the boat would show up, how badly their folks would flip out, the identity of the dead man in the cabin. Most of all, they’d talk about how they’d be safe, real soon.

But Shelley was positive the boat wasn’t coming.