The Crawling Dark

At first, we thought they were spiders.

The basement was cold and dark.

It was almost a week after we moved in.

We bothered to venture down the wooden staircase that we discovered on our first night in the house.

There was a switch at the top of the stairs, a single bulb lit.

The concrete bunker that Lander Neath our home.

My wife shivered or perhaps shattered and stopped at the door as I took my first steps downward.

I've seen basements before, and this was nothing.

Extraordinary concrete floors, haphazardly, constructed shelving, and a feeling of dampness in the air.

The corner of the room caught my eye as I looked around.

As I said at first, we thought they were spiders ranging from tiny specks to alarmingly large.

They gave the illusion of a multitude of legs, and they huddled in one corner of the basement, near the ground.

I had reached the bottom of the staircase, and I took a few concrete steps towards the spiders.

I had never felt Read anything.

Like what I felt in that moment.

My skin went cold, the hairs on my arms stood on end, and it became an effort to even remain standing.

Nausea overcame me, and I took several steps back until my feet found the wooden staircase that led me back into the comfort of my new home.

I took a breath.

I embraced my wife.

I installed a lock on the basement door.

We heard noises at night, the sounds of hush movement, a rustling, and something a little more organic, the sound of Limbs hundreds, thousands of them flesh moving and grinding against itself in the middle of the night.

We worried that our son wouldn't be able to sleep.

But as far as we could tell, he noticed nothing about a week later.

I opened the basement door on a whim.

There was a flurry of movement at the edges of the darkness.

I flicked on the light and the spiders scurried.

I caught a haunting glimpse of them scattered in bunches all around the room, the walls and ceiling were dark with patches.

The creatures huddling together breathing, as the light came on, and I blanked, they retreated back into the Shadows, back into the corner.

I gagged at the smell.

I've never smelled anything like it.

An exterminator was called but he couldn't even make it down the stairs before throwing up all over himself.

He was inconsolable.

He wanted nothing to do with us.

He told us it was our own problem that we weren't paying him enough for that, whatever it was.

Things quieted down for a while.

We figured it could be dealt with later if we just ignored it and kept the door closed, but it lingered as these things do in the back of my mind.

I could see the basement.

I could see the spiders and, in the night, we could hear them.

It was getting louder.

My wife didn't agree, or at least she wouldn't admit it.

It.

I couldn't blame her for denying it.

My skin crawled at the thought of the basement and the spiders that inhabited it.

I needed to go away on business.

I didn't want to go; my wife didn't want me to go with our son.

Cried, as I pulled out of the driveway.

My wife held him in her arms and solemnly waived, then kissed him on the cheek.

I knew it would be fine.

They're only spiders after all.

I was away longer than I intended.

Negotiations ran long.

I spent long nights in the hotel and long days in an unfamiliar office on the third day after returning to my hotel room.

I spoke to my wife on the phone.

Her tone was soft.

I could picture her glazed eyes.

They come out at night.

She said I was tired and irritable.

What?

Who I ask feels good.

It feels so good.

She groaned letting out of side, a grip.

The phone is in my hand.

I decided to return home.

There are more important things in life than keeping a client happy.

I drove home the next morning.

It took me half the day.

My wife didn't pick up the phone when I called.

I felt sick to my stomach.

I pulled into the driveway in the early afternoon.

The curtains of our bedroom were still pulled closed as I entered through the front door.

I called my wife's name.

A soft voice responded.

I'm in the bedroom.

I apprehensively followed the sound of her voice and held open.

The bedroom door, the sunlight blocked by the curtains, barely lit.

The room in front of me on the floor, lay my wife naked pale shuddering in the corner of the room.

The carpeted floor was decayed.

Leave.

The hole into the basement from which protruded three limbs.

Black living disjointed.

One limb had pierced the skin of her chest area, spreading a black rash, to the surrounding skin.

Dark blood had dried around the wound and fresh blood poured over that onto the carpet.

A limb had wrapped itself around her leg and broken it.

A bone stuck out at an angle.

I couldn't bear to look at the third.

Smallest.

Lim had snaked its way into my wife's mouth.

Where pulsed, the matted black fur that covered it brushed against her sickly pale skin vomit, stain.

The edges of her mouth, the front of her clothes, and the carpet underneath her head.

The stench overpowered me, and I immediately, Threw up on the floor.

In front of myself, the sounds I made caused the reactionary movement.

The third limb quickly retracted from her mouth, causing blood to well up from her throat and flow out onto her body.

And the floor.

This vessel disappeared into the dark mass in the corner.

The other two limbs moved in unison to pull her toward their destination, in the corner, her legs snapped again, and the skin on her chest, ripped further as she was violently wrenched into the wall, the limbs.

I pulled out her in unnatural ways.

I watched falling to my knees vomit, filling my nose and pouring from my mouth.

Her chest was torn open, and her body folded into an impossible shape as it was broken and pulled through the rotten hole in the floor into the basement.

I cried out my voice cracked and through my tears.

I saw more limbs.

Moving outwards from the corner of the room towards me.

My hands felt puddles of my own vomit as I pushed myself backward out through the bedroom door.

I scrambled to my feet and moved days as quickly as I could down the hallway.

Toward my son's bedroom.

I couldn't think straight.

I could barely see.

I threw open the door.

My son's corpse.

Lay empty.

What was once the body of my child was now an empty shell.

His insides appeared to have been sucked dry, a black rash covered part.

Of his skin near his mouth and chest.

His skull had collapsed inwards as though it were the Cocoon of an insect crushed by the fingers of, a man.

I screamed.

I stumbled forward and landed on my hands and knees in front of my son in desperation.

I grabbed what was left of his arm and lifted it, the arm broke easily.

The skin tearing to reveal weakened, rotting bones within.

I cried out again, as every part of him.

I tried to hold to feel simply fell apart at my touch.

I heard the sound of Flesh moving.

Grinding against itself from below the room.

I noticed that the floor underneath my son had rotted and darkened and by this time the sound was deafening the rotted portions of the floor underneath.

My son's corpse began to fall away and through the holes.

A song limb black with matted fur and dead flesh writhing and climbing in the basement below.

Thousands of Limbs fighting with each other but somehow coordinated Rising towards me and filling the space of the basement.

The stench was nearly unbearable before.

At this point, overwhelmed me completely my vision faltered, and I struggled to remain conscious.

I stopped breathing and fell backward onto the carpet.

The jolt awakened me.

I don't know how I found the strength, but I crawled to my feet, and I ran from the room in tears.

Hindered my vision as mucus and vomit, filled my nose and mouth.

I dared, not look into our bedroom as I continued to run.

I swore I could see the walls and floors of the house.

Slowly rotting turning black surrendering themselves to the blight in the basement.

I tripped and rolled out the front door of the house, then scrambled.

Back to my feet.

As I felt the limbs of the creature brush against my ankle.

I screamed again and pulled my ankle as hard as I could.

The limbs didn't get a chance to grip me properly and I stumbled to my feet.

I ran I dare.

Did not look back.

I dared, not slow down.

I dared, not close my eyes.

My breath ran out, yet.

I kept going, I could feel my body crying out for me to relent, or to give in but I couldn't.

I allowed myself a brief Look Backwards and was faced with a site.

I will never forget an enormous.

Spider, like a leg protruding through the roof.

The house shivered and stretched as the house appeared to be pulled down from the inside almost all at once.

Black smoke began to spread from where my house had stood only moments ago, but I turned back and continued to run.

I didn't stop until my body collapsed and I lay losing Consciousness in the middle of the road and the older man was the one who came across me.

I listen to the incomprehensible cries of the monsters of my home of my family.

He gave me water.

He took me to get help.

He did not believe me.

Nobody believes me and after some reflection, it's hard to blame them.

The bodies were gone.

The house lay in Ruins a freak accident.

They said the foundations of the house were unstable.

It's amazing.

The lengths people will go to to explain things away, especially given the alternative.

Time passed and my resolve faltered the details of my story became shaky.

That's why I'm recording.

What's left of them here, my wife and son were lost years ago with each passing day.

I become less familiar with love.

We once shared less certain of the things that I had seen at first.

We thought they were spiders.

Now, I'm not even sure they were anything at all.

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