the thumping legs of the monster: Mum and Dad shouting, Sis screaming. She fought to get across into the front seat, as far away from the thing as possible, and dad was struggling to hold the car straight as she knocked her feet against his head and shoulders.
Surprisingly calm for a moment, Joey stared at the beast and said, “Is that thing real?”
The Crawler’s legs were moving so fast they were blurred, and Joey didn’t even see which legs it used to swipe at the car: the back window exploded inwards for seemingly no reason, spraying glass over all. Suddenly the sounds of the monster were amplified; he could hear it’s ragged breathing.
He stared into those eyes again, and knew the monster had come for him.
14
“Come out now and I will spare you. Otherwise Sally will have your eyes and Mother will crunch your bones.”
The Head was at the cellar door, staring down into the gloom, trying to see. But his old eyes didn’t work well at all these days.
“I will count to three, boy. One -“
“Three!” Lem yelled as he burst out of the darkness, crashing into the Head and his chair. The chair rolled, turned, skidded, fell. Lem landed atop the old man and heard a pitiful grunt of pain escape him. Lem was unhurt and got quickly to his feet. He backed away from the old man’s clutching fingers.
“Zah! You’ve done it now, boy! I will send her to your house, your house, and she will eat your heart! Zah!”
Lem’s bravado was buoyed by the sight of such a pitiful creature incapacitated so. The nerves fell out of him; he stared down at the Head and a grin cut his face.
“Oh yes. Send.” Lem stepped past the wailing Head and approached the table that held the model. The Head tried to crane his head to the right to see what the boy was up to, but was unable.
“What are you doing? Boy, what are you doing? Zah!”
His answer was the click of a door closing. Lem had gone.
15
Crawler shifted out into the middle of the road and paced the car, which was nudging ninety miles per hour, and then she rammed it. The side windows shattered as the chassis crumpled like tinfoil. Jagged shards of metal poked into Dad, who yelped in pain. He fought to keep control of the vehicle.
Unfinished, Crawler stabbed at the rear left window with her teeth; they scraped metal with a sickening sound. Saliva as thick as petroleum jelly splattered Joey, making him gag. He froze.
Again the monster rammed the car, forcing it laterally across the road with a screech of rubber. There was a bang as the vehicle lost a tyre. From the naked wheel, sparks flew up past the windows on the right side like a host of fireflies taking to the sky.
Another pair of lights stabbed into the car, this time from ahead. They wavered as Dad fought to control the car, gritting his teeth against the pain, ignoring the blood.
Crawler roared, and this time the children heard it. Again she roared, and now there was a new sound in the air. A heavy rumble, as if -
One final time the other driver blared his horn, but it was too late. Bright light washed over Crawler, exposing her every detail. Brown she was, not black, and her eyes jabbed ahead of her with just enough time to register imminent danger. Then with a sickening meaty thud she screamed, a piteous sound, and the eighteen-wheeler blew past in the opposite direction so close and fast that the wind rocked the car and everybody inside it.
The car skidded, turned. The occupants were tossed like dolls as the vehicle slipped into the muddy verge and stuck fast.
Joey’s line of vision was poetic and just. Upside down, he watched as the truck veered off the road and toppled. Over it rolled with a sound like bombs falling, crushing trees. He thought he saw the body of the Crawler tumbling too. Then it was all over, and his eyelids closed, and the last sound before silence reigned was that breaking-tree noise again, receding.
Receding.
16
Gorgon found the Headmaster lying in his own piss. Despite his moans and his condition, she took the time to carefully place her shopping bags on a chair before moving to help him.
“You moan oh so loud for an old man,” Gorgon told him.
“Ssshhh!” Headmaster hissed, spittle dribbling over his yellow teeth. He listened for long moments to the noises of the cottage, but his ears picked up nothing. Gorgon wiped away his dribble with a hankie.
“Zah! He’s gone. Zah!” He slammed his fists down onto thin legs that knew no feeling. “He’ll ruin everything! Get me up, woman!”
Anyone else suffering under his hypnotic stare would have melted in moments, but Gorgon had been around the head too long, they had been through so much and too much together. And now, in their most desperate hour, she cast aside his power and his authority, and once more they were just husband and wife. And suddenly her overwhelming size was more than a match for his frail and pathetic state.
“Don’t you order me around like that,” she told him in a mother-admonishing-son manner. Then she bent her bulk over him and so began a long process of getting the Headmaster into his chair. At the end of the task, Gorgon was slick with sweat and stank almost as badly as the Headmaster.
“Now you’re over that tantrum, let’s fix this problem,” Gorgon said. “We own this town, not those fools with their weak children. No one will believe what those two boys tell them. We have fine standing in this community, and power, and so by this time tomorrow -“
She froze at a piercing sound from outside.
“What the Jehovah was that?” she wheezed. She trundled to the window and cast aside the thick curtains. “Sounded oh so like a tree falling.”
The evidence lay visible out the window. A great portion of the fence enclosing their property had been flattened: the trees camouflaging the barrier were bent towards the cottage as if by a giant’s footstep. A clear path had been forced through the ring, but how - and by what?
“Dear Lord, what’s happened here?” Gorgon seemed calm, as if facing nothing more than a tricky crossword puzzle.
By contrast, Headmaster’s yelp was a terrible squawk of fear and shock. Gorgon whirled at that shriek, her long hair whipping round her head and into her face, where strands glued themselves to her perspiring skin. It made her look somehow sexy and terrified at the same time.
Her eyes dropped from her old husband to the model upon the table, and she saw there what had elicited such a moan from the Headmaster.
The tarantula had risen from its lair beneath the table and was scurrying across the model, headed for the cottage, but she moved with an obvious limp. She was already within the ring of trees; behind her the model fence and a number of trees lay flat.
“My lord above, what a mess you’ve made, you naughty girl,” Gorgon cooed, smiling.
“Kill it!” Headmaster screamed, his voice cracked. “Squash it now!”
“Don’t be -“ she began, then stopped.
In the centre of the model was their cottage, replete w
ith exact detail. The correct tiles were missing from the roof; earth in the lawn was turned; and through an upper windows she could see their bed of oak, where long ago they laid had in love and sleep. But upon that bed now there lay only dust and a scattering of white hair. His hair, placed there by a boy.
Gorgon saw it too, and, realising the mortal danger her husband faced, loosed a moan of loss, as if he were already dead.
Sally neared the cottage and launched herself. She landed on top of the model cottage; concurrently, a thud sounded high above that yanked a scream from Gorgon’s meaty throat.
Crawler, that vile and monstrous puppet of whatever consciousness held sway over both arachnids. She was coming for the Headmaster.
“Lord!” Gorgon said. “Look at this problem you bring. I always knew that beast would prove to be our undoing.”
Soot billowed out of the fireplace; above them the roof of the cottage creaked and groaned. Sally squirmed atop the model cottage, trying to feed a leg down the chimney. Then a hairy and thick and giant leg poked out the fireplace, drenched in steaming thick blood, and the Headmaster and the Gorgon screamed.
Sally had begun destroying the roof of the model cottage; in moments she was through, as the Head