time the boy looked on with wonder, and a little hope. The Head would enjoy dashing that hope.
“No, she can’t harm anyone at all. She’s far too…” he licked his dry old lips “…small.”
When now the Headmaster laughed, fear bubbled within Lem like lava seeking to erupt from a volcano and threatened to engulf him.
11
The unnamed road through Ball Woods was still wet from the morning’s rain; the moonlight filtering through the canopy of branches high overhead sparkled where it caught the moisture. Dad’s car glided fluently along this sparkling solid river, accompanied by the beat of Scottish music, which Mum found relaxing.
Sis was reading a magazine for female teenagers: the cover boasted interviews with hunks and a Leonardo DiCaprio pull-out calendar. Joey found the tastes of girls both humourous and vexing. He spent his own time staring out the back window, counting the motor homes he saw parked by the side of the road. The road was frequently used by such travellers who sometimes stopped to eat or sleep or have sex. Big trucks sometimes passed along the road, too. But tonight all was quiet.
“Dad, he farted again, and you told him not to,” Sis blurted. When Joey looked round, she was holding her nose and wafting her magazine as if to disperse the odour.
“Joey, we’ll have to have a fart box,” Dad said. “Unfortunately, you’ll fart your pocket money all away.”
The whole family found this amusing. But as soon as they had started, Dad stopped, and turned down the radio. He looked concerned.
“What is it?” Mum asked, and she looked concerned too. They shared a glance that Joey caught, and very much didn’t like. She wound down her window slightly; the wind rushed in, whipping Sis’s hair and the pages of her magazine. But another sound intruded, too: cracking and snapping sounds, as if the trees were alive and moving.
“Are they bulldozing the bloody forests for high-rises again?” Sis said. Mum and Dad ignored her, so intent were they on that sound; Joey just looked at her with a puzzled expression, having failed to understand what his freaky big sister was prattling about.
“What you prattling about?”
“Be quiet, you two,” Dad said. He wound down his own window. The wind that soared in was cold and sneaky and sought to explore every chink in their clothing. Goosebumps rose on Joey’s arms. But he ignored them: that sound was scaring him now.
“Are the trees falling down?”
“It might just be -“ Dad began, and that was when he and Mum jerked their heads left. “Jesus!” dad yelled over Mum’s yelp. They had just heard the call of the Crawler, though their children, those beings upon which the Crawler fed, heard nothing.
“What - what is it?” Sis said. Her eyes were wide with fear.
“Oh god it’s after us!” Mum moaned. Dad took her hand and shook his head as if to say, Don’t alert the children!
Joey was pressed against the back seat as the car jerked forward. The speed limit was demolished as Dad’s foot crushed the accelerator into the floor.
“Dad, what’s going on?” Sis moaned. Joey took her hand and she squeezed it hard. He didn’t know what was going on, but he was certainly afraid - but only because the rest of his family were.
As the car gained speed, the snapping tree noises fell behind, receding. Joey turned to look out the back window. Big Sis copied. She was breathing rapidly.
They didn’t actually see the thing that crashed out of the woods, casting aside trees like matchsticks, but a black shadow moved across the wide road, blotting out the wet tarmac that sparkled beneath the moon. Based on the size of that shadow, the thing that cast it was big. Very big. Maybe the size of a house, Joey’s frantic mind offered.
With a resounding crash the trees on the opposite side of the road caved inwards. The thunderous sound of their breaking was like the noise of a banquet of giants gnawing at tremendous bones.
The sound grew. Whatever thing had burst out of the woods was nearing. Chasing. Hunting.
12
Sally had veered away from the house, Lem saw. Now the tarantula was zipping speeding through Bell Woods, which the Head had recreated using small Bonsai trees to remarkable, realistic effect.
“Do you want to know the truth?” the Headmaster said as he rolled his chair towards Lem, who had backed off until his butt touched the cellar door. “If you are to be with me, help me, then you should know.” The Head jerked his eyes to the left.
Lem made the mistake of looking, and the Head pounced.
For an old man he moved lithely. In a moment he had grabbed Lem’s jumper and hauled himself out the wheelchair, rising to his full height. His face came close to Lem’s and the boy smelled rank breath, as if a pocket of air had remained in the old man’s chest for decades.
“get the hell off me!” Lem snarled. He put his hand on top of the Head’s head and pushed. The old man crumpled hard into his chair and his momentum sent it rolling backwards.
Wisps of his hair clung to Lem’s fingers. Wrapping his fist around it, Lem turned, yanked open the cellar door, and was gone, down into the dark. Why he hadn’t headed out of the house, he didn’t know. But it was too late now.
Down he went, blind, trusting to luck that he wouldn’t trip and fall. Down and down, as if into the earth’s centre. Seconds might have become minutes: time lost its meaning in such eerie silent blackness.
And then he reached the bottom, but it came so unexpectedly that he lost his balance, for he was still trying to step downwards, and fell flat on his face.
There was light ahead, coming from a hole in the ceiling. Moonlight. Enough to show him that he was in some kind of cavernous sewer tunnel.
Lem got to his feet and ran, but slowly this time for his feet slipped on the slimy brick floor. By the time he stood beneath the hole in the ceiling, his socks and feet were cold and wet.
He looked up. The hole was round and wide, about seven feet in diameter. A well! One of dozens throughout Bordon, all disused since the 1950s. Yet the stench that permeated the air here wasn’t one of age. Lem knew that these tunnels had seen activity recently.
He raced on, seeing another shaft of light far ahead. But before he got there he hit a junction. He looked left and right, unsure which was to go.
And here the walls were covered with white mould, the kind he found in his own cellar a few weeks after the cats had decided to use it as a personal toilet. He moved closer, compelled to do so by a child’s curiosity. Strands of the mould hung from the ceiling so low that he had to sidestep and duck out of their way as they wafted in a light breeze. But one caught his cheek and stuck there until he ripped it away. It had felt silky, like…
Lem gasped. He knew what this stuff was, and it wasn’t mould. He was staring at sheets and chandeliers of cobwebs. But there was so much of the stuff, as if these tunnels were home to a million spiders.
Or a single giant one.
13
The noise of breaking trees had ceased a minute before; the only sound now was that of the car’s engine. Mum and Dad were silent, facing ahead. But Sis and Joey were staring out the back window, watching, waiting…fearing.
And slowly they became aware of shadows moving behind them. The moonlight that caught the wet road was blotted out some way back, and the shadow was fast approaching the car. In horror they watched as the shadow closed, and now the entire road behind that shadow was hidden. Slowly the shadow took form; they saw moving things that became limbs, racing legs. Eight of them.
“What the hell is that?” Sis screamed, throwing herself hard away from the back window and into Mum’s seat.
Like a moving piece of night, the giant black spider closed the gap between itself and the speeding car, until it was so close the truth could not be doubted. Transfixed, Joey saw the hairs on its thick and muscular legs; he saw its wild and coherent eyes boring into not just the car but him. He saw thick red veins beneath the translucent black skin of its van-sized abdomen. And he saw the moonlight glinting off teeth so slick with slime they appeared silver.
Now he became aware of the noises in the car, which soon blotted out