The Spider

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

A lone hiker shook the match out and slid the burnt stick back into the matchbox. The light of the candleflame reflected in the window’s glass and flickered for a moment as he shut the door behind him. In the warm glow, the hiker observed a carpet of dust on the floor and grey tangled cobwebs matted across the window panes.

“Thank God I found this place” he said to himself.

“And thank God for that candle on the windowsill… just as my torch died.”

Rain poured outside.

The hiker had gotten lost. Maybe he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, although he was quite sure there was only one path. In any case, he hadn’t found his campsite as the sun began to set. He'd trudged onwards, the forest becoming denser around every bend.

As night fell, it started to rain. The hiker, having given up on finding his campsite, and the woods on either side of the trail now almost impenetrable, began to wish for just a clearing where he might be able to place his tent for the night.

The cabin was more than he’d hoped for. The rain drummed on the tin roof as he breathed a sigh of relief. He put his pack down against the wall.

The hiker had heard of these cabins before, dotted throughout the remote wilderness, once occupied by some hermit or recluse, now abandoned and left to the elements and passers-by like himself to seek refuge in. This one was clearly uninhabited. He could tell when he pushed the door open and the cobwebs across the frame had fallen away in drapes.

“I’ll spend the night here and track back in the morning” he told himself.

The cabin was small, one room, maybe about four metres by four metres, with two square windows on every wall and one on each side beside the door.

The hiker took another step inside and noticed another candle, this one on the floor. It was held in place by its own melted wax. He bent down and lit the candle, and as the light of the new flame illuminated more of the room, he saw that there was at least one candle on every windowsill and others bunched and fused together on the floorboards, big and small and at various stages of use.

“Strange” the hiker thought. He lit a few more, and the room filled with a bright yellow light.

The cobwebs covering the walls were spread across every surface except the floor. Sheets of them drooped from the ceiling like a circus tent and the edges and corners of the room couldn’t even be seen behind the musty tangles of silk.

Roughly sweeping away some dust with his shoes, the hiker cleared a space in the middle of the room and unrolled his mat onto the floor. He pulled a blanket out of his pack and then he took off his jumper and folded it up to make a pillow. Starting to feel tired, he sat down on the mat and unlaced his boots.

The hiker leaned over and blew out the candles as he settled into his bed. He left the candle on the windowsill by the door, the one he had lit when he'd stepped inside. The hiker wasn’t afraid of the dark, but still, he felt uneasy about plunging into pitch blackness in this abandoned place. The candle in the window was at least a signal to any other passers-by: please knock before you enter. It remained his presence while he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

***

Hours later, in the middle of the night, the hiker was jarred awake by a thump on the roof. He sat up, momentarily alarmed. The candle on the windowsill was still burning. The rain and the wind had come to a stop. Like a cold dew, an eerie stillness had settled on the trees.

“It must have been a branch or a possum or some other animal scrambling around” he thought.

The hiker sat and waited and heard nothing else, but just as he was about to lie down again, he heard a click and a long scratch on the door, and then another click and another long scratch on the window behind him.

*click* scraaaatch

*click* scraaaatch

He turned around but saw nothing through the dark window, but then another click and another scratch on the door, and then another on the wall to his right and then immediately to his left too. The sounds were like fingernails reaching down from the trees.

The hiker sat motionless, his heart pounding.

“Hello...?” he called out softly, immediately feeling a little stupid for being so afraid.

Although he was terrified, the hiker knew it was probably just the wind picking up again and the trees brushing against the cabin. If he could just muster up the courage to step outside and see what was making the noise, he’d be at ease and he'd probably even laugh at himself for getting so scared.

The tapping and scratching, like slow writing on a chalkboard, continued on the windows, the walls and the door.

*click* scraaaatch

*click* scraaaatch

The hiker reached for his pack and pulled out his knife. He sat on his mat clutching it. In just a moment, he would go and see what was making the noise.

He lit one of the candles next to his mat and stood up, holding it in one hand and his knife in the other.

The hiker took a step toward the door, feeling brave and determined to investigate, but then he noticed the doorknob shake.

shkshk...shkshk

It rattled as if someone had grabbed it from the other side.

The hiker stood, frozen in place, all his courage gone, and watched as the knob began to turn.

“Hello?!” he called out again, trying to hold down the fear in his voice. The scratching at the walls stopped.

A low whispery voice responded.

“Hellooooo….”

The hiker jumped. He dropped the candle in his hand and its light went out.

The candle in the window continued to burn.

"Who's there?!" he yelled. This time his panic was unrestrained.

A loud and murderous laugh cracked through the silent night.

He-he-he...HE-HE-HE...he-he-he-HE-HE!

The door began to creak open.

Thin, black branches appeared around the sides of the door as it swung slowly forward. The hiker stood transfixed, motionless, unable to move. As it opened further, the branches released the edges of the door and stretched inwards like tendrils coming into the room.

The hiker, hardly able to breathe, realised that the things opening the door weren’t branches at all. They were insect legs, spindly with many joints, covered in short, shiny hairs and ending in small, sharp, hooked claws.

The long legs stretched past him and began to fill the room. The claws clicked against the walls and scratched along the ground, dragging themselves around and waving disjointedly like a bug's feelers or like the flailing parts of a broken machine.

"I sawww the candles," the voice cackled again.

He-he-he...HE-HE-HE-he-he-he...

The haunting sound of the laughter slipped through the air.

The legs now completely filled the room, bent at their many knees, pressed up against the walls and propped like waving bars around the hiker's mat. A black hairy mass they were attached to followed the legs and appeared at the opening of the door. It bulged through and towered into the space.

As far as he could tell in his petrified state, the hiker recognised the black mass to be a giant, bulbous spider. Its long and thin eight legs lifted its body off the floor and it seemed to almost float before him. Its belly like its legs was covered in shiny, sharp, black hairs.

“I sawww the candles” the spider said again, drawling the words across the room.

Its face was the most terrifying of all its features. The spider had a large human smile with white jagged teeth and rows of black soulless spider eyes above it, buttoned across its head. The hiker felt faint, his legs began to buckle as he gazed up at the terrifying beast.

“When the candle is lit... it is feeding time...”

The words came out of the demonic mouth, spitting, protracted, drawn-out syllables.

He-he-he...HE-HE-HE-he-he-he-HE-HE!

The hiker felt his legs give way. The spider's evil laugh was like a barb through his ears. He was on the brink of vomiting. This was too much for him. He realised he was going to die.

But as the hiker’s knees turned to jelly, he didn’t fall. He felt the spider’s claws press into his back and another two wrap around his ankles as it held him and pulled him closer, turning its round head to one side and beginning to smile, cackling now quietly into his ear.

“I moved the trees... to make you come here...”

The spider spoke slowly, smiling, hissing and dragging its words.

“You made me come here?” the hiker trembled.

“I move the trees to make you come... and I make it rain so you come inside... and then you light the candle… and I know you are here...”

The spider explained its horrific trap.

The hiker wondered if the cobwebs covering the room were the remains of former hikers like himself.

The spider continued to smile. The claws pressed into the hiker’s back kneaded into him in a slow frenzy and he felt their grip tighten on his ankles, while another took hold of the wrist of the hand in which he held his knife; one reached around and pinched him across the back of his neck and another traced its way down his face. The spider leaned closer, its lips furled and its teeth wet and gnashing. It opened its mouth, and the hiker was engulfed in the heat of its breath and the revolting stench of wet dust and rotten guts.

***

The hiker woke and noticed it was light in the room. Bleary eyed and groggy, he couldn’t see very well, but it was sunlight, he was sure. It was morning.

As the hiker came to his senses, he realised that he couldn’t move. He also realised he could hardly see and it took him only a moment to register that he was wrapped in cobwebs. He was mummified but alive. The hiker screamed, but his mouth was so tightly bound and muffled by the webs, he barely made a sound. He writhed around on the floor, trying to kick and move his arms but nothing he would do would set him free.

There was no sign of the spider. As far as he could tell, the hiker was alone in the cabin. “It must be coming back for me” he thought. The hiker had passed out from fear, or maybe the spider had suffocated him or poisoned him. Whatever it had done, it had wrapped him up and left him in the cabin, and the hiker had no doubt that it would be back for him soon.

He began to cry, lying there in the dust, helpless, wrapped in a sticky web, waiting for his inevitable death. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see its long smile and sharp teeth and its slender and disgusting legs. As these images flashed into his mind, they sparked fresh panic and the hiker screamed and screamed. He pushed and pulled his body in every direction but with hardly any movement at all. The webs were as strong as rope.

As the hiker rolled around hysterically, onto his stomach, his face pressing into the wooden floorboards and then onto his side, he felt a pressure in his hand. He could barely move his fingers, they were bound so tight, but he suddenly realised that he was still holding his knife.

This realisation hit the hiker with a great force of hope. The blade was also tightly bound, but it was sharp and if he could just create enough movement, it might be able to cut through the webbing to give him the mobility required to break free.

The hiker rocked to-and-fro on his side, excited, anxious but trying to remain calm, praying the spider wouldn't return before he escaped. He moved his arm and the fist holding the knife as much as he could, which was hardly anything at all, but maybe it would be enough. Slowly but surely as he continued to rock, he felt that he could move his hand more and more and suddenly as if it had reached a tipping point, the webbing that bound his arm began to tear away.

Overjoyed and breathless, with a new lease on life, the hiker used his free hand to slice away the webbing on his other arm and then dropped the knife and used both hands to frantically pull away the webs covering his face and legs.

Sunlight streamed into the cabin. It was late morning now. The hiker put on his boots and picked up his knife. The mat was still on the floor and his pack was against the wall. He had no time to take anything. He had no idea when the spider would be back. For all he knew, it could be waiting on the roof, or maybe it was just around the corner coming back for him now. He had to leave immediately.

The hiker burst out of the cabin and ran. He did not look back. He pushed through the trees following the trail he’d arrived on.

He ran breathless, fuelled by adrenaline and not slowing down. He raced through the woods. He started to see familiar sights: a look-out, a log he'd rested on, and finally after hours of running, a sign indicating that he was heading in the direction of the road he'd parked his car on.

It was a sign of civilisation. The hiker felt like he was going to cry with happiness. He couldn’t believe the terror he had experienced. He couldn't wait to be at home with his friends and family again. Nobody would believe him, but he didn't care. He was glad to be alive.

The hiker turned a corner, expecting to see the way out of the forest soon. The path became narrower, but he kept running, so eager to get to his car and drive away from these woods. He was on the home-stretch now. Nothing would slow him down. The bushes reached out and scratched against him but he didn't care as he bolted through.

“Any moment now,” the hiker told himself. “The road is just around this bend.”

He continued to run. The path became narrower. The forest seemed to get denser again.

“Was I running too fast and missed a turn?” the hiker wondered to himself. He paused for a moment and looked back, starting to feel confused, but the way he’d come from looked exactly like the way he was going.

The sun began to set and rain clouds began to form. As the first drops fell and the thunder started to roll, the hiker heard a chilling voice.

“I moved the trees... to make you come here…”

He-he-he...HE-HE-HE...he-he-he-HE-HE!