At the same time that Seth was trapped beneath the spider with his head clenched in its jaws, Crush took the small window of opportunity that Seth’s unsuccessful attack had provided to slam his fist and extended claws into one of the glossy black eyes on the top of the spider’s head. As the fist smashed into the round optical organ, the eye made a crunching sound as it buckled with the strike from his hand, and blood and matter leaked from the pulp of the eye. Stricken with pain and blinded in one of its eight eyes, the spider let go of Seth’s head and spun around wildly as the damaged socket throbbed like a toothache. When the spider had turned its abdomen around toward Pound, the hairy and fanged humans that were perched on the creature’s back slid one-by-one from the back of the great beast as it screamed in agony, and Pound was surprised to see that the humans were not quite so human anymore. They were in fact werewolves, and Pound counted eight of the creatures.
“Great! As if a giant wolf spider weren’t enough! Now we have to fight werewolves!” he exclaimed aloud, though both Crush and Seth were busy tangling with the spider. Pound tried to concentrate on communicating with the trees one last time, but he was getting very little response from the surrounding vegetation. “Come on, something has to give!” he said as the wolves began to surround him threateningly.
And something did give. At that moment one single gangly tree pulled up its roots and trudged toward the call of the master. When the undersized and unhealthy looking tree stalked into the circle, the werewolves barked and growled at the wooden warrior as it lowered one of its limbs to wrap around Pound’s midsection and lift him above the fray. The werewolves howled their discontent at the interruption that had stolen their victim, and for the first time that Pound could ever recall, the tree made a sound back. The tree actually barked out loud. Not once, but repeatedly, and the werewolves backed away from the mysterious wooden warrior’s growls of anger. Pound examined the leaves that hung from the limbs and recognized the tree for what it was.
“I don’t believe it! This is a dogwood!” Pound cried out in joy at the bit of luck he was having. “Get ‘em, boy! Sick ‘em!” he commanded as the lanky limbs of the small deciduous tree swung back and forth to hold the werewolves at bay.
Seth was beneath the flailing and injured spider, and he took the opportunity that Crush had created to crawl between the arachnid’s legs and out from under its smothering weight. Seeing stars in his eyes and struggling to catch his breath, Seth rose to his feet to run away from the beast but stumbled down to the ground in his confusion. He lay there for a moment as the barking of werewolves and the screeching of the giant spider filled his auditory canals with noise. He rolled over to look at the sky where dark clouds rolled in from above the mountain, and he knew that he had to do something to save himself or risk death at the bite of the spider. The fangs of the great beast were so large that a single piercing would be akin to a gunshot wound, and the effects of the venom afterward were yet to be discovered.
“I don’t want to find out what the fangs will do to me,” Seth said to himself as he rolled onto his chest and forced himself to stand to his feet. Once his vision had cleared sufficiently, Seth faced a bold decision that he had never had to make before: which of his friends would he fight to protect. Watching Pound perched in a small tree and fighting werewolves, he thought that perhaps he should aid the master of vegetation in his fight for survival. After all, the werewolves seemed solely focused on Pound, and if his partner was not careful, he could be pulled from the protection of the tree. Then there was the matter of Crush who was still riding out the bucking wolf spider’s rodeo antics, and Seth wondered if he could do anything at all to help save the cat-man from his fate. With only an instant to decide, Seth elected the hardest course for himself and bravely chose to once again take on the colossal task of subduing the spider.
“Crush!” Seth called out to the agent. “I’m coming to help!” Crush held on tight to the thick, brushy hairs on the top side of the spider and managed to get out one word between jolts.
“Run!” Crush screamed, and the shout helped Seth to realize that the situation was direr than he could have imagined. With an unbelievably agile move, the spider leaned all of its weight onto the four legs of its right side and then smoothly tucked the legs beneath itself. Rolling onto its right side, the creature shrewdly used the momentum to flip over onto its back. The nimble move happened so quickly that Crush had no time to react, and Seth placed his hand over his mouth in horror as the spider then rolled back over onto its legs again, rolling over his friend’s body and leaving Crush in a damaged heap upon the ground. Wasting no time, the spider collapsed on Crush’s wounded body. The morose creature sunk its fangs into Crush’s side as he lay sprawled out on the ground, and Crush could scarcely believe his own eyes as the spider then began to sickeningly wrap the cat-man’s twitching body inside of a thin tight web.
With all of the heart that he had shown in his time in the Middle East, Seth flashed the blade that he held at his side as he ran toward the spider. In a last brave attempt to free Crush, Seth leaped for the seven remaining exposed eyes on the spider’s head, and as he sailed through the air, the spider flipped its two front legs outward like spring boards. The legs caught Seth as he glided toward the eyes and flipped him upward and over the bulk of the spider to land sliding along the dirt and gravel. With scratched and bleeding elbows, Seth laid on the ground momentarily defeated as the spider paid him no more mind and went back to draping Crush’s body in the silky transparent webbing. The spider then grabbed hold of Crush’s feet and dragged him backward toward the cave from which it had come, and without so much as a whimper, the spider and Crush disappeared into the hole.
If I were to dance with you
I’d dance as if our love were new
I’d dance as if our love were real
I’d dance as if our love were true.
You wiggle for me, sure enough
You shake and swing your fists so rough
You throw your body in a wheel
And sling your legs to meet my bluff.
I tiptoe around your worldly soul
And study you through my eyes of coal
Soon I’ll enjoy a lovely meal
Not the first of which that I have stole.
If we were to dance, we two
We’d dance as if our love were true
I’d make you lose your power to feel
You’d fill me with your life blood’s brew.
*
Said The Spider To The Fly
*
Dr. Tatum drove under the ledge and into the parking garage at the DAM headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland. Her vacation was near an end, and she had decided to stop by the office to check her emails before going home to unpack and unwind from the six hour drive from Winston-Salem. Traffic through Washington, D.C., had been predictably heavy at times, and she felt that a stop along the way would relieve some of the road tension that had built before she reached home. When she arrived at the main door to the area, she dipped her hand into the leather purse that she wore on her shoulder and reclaimed the set of office keys from the particles of dust between the seams in the bottom of the bag.
“I really need to clean this thing out some time,” she thought as she unlocked the front office door and stepped inside to find that the office had been left in a state of disarray with folders and papers lying about on the tables in the cubicle area. Dr. Tatum breathed an anxious sigh to see firsthand the effects that her vacation had on the organization of the office, and though she doubted herself at times, she understood that she was able to bring organization and structure to the lives of the field agents in her care. Moving ahead through the clutter, she then stepped into the library area to find a similar situation, though from the amount of disarray, it appeared that someone had actually taken up temporary residence in the space while she was away. Bending down, she recovered several hairs of short length and surmised tha
t Crush had been the culprit.
“It’s good to be back,” she said to herself sarcastically as she began to examine and arrange the folders on the various tables. Stacking the folders in alphabetical order on the library table, Dr. Tatum found a yellow sticky note addressed to her. “Doc. Gone to York, PA, with the boys. Checking out the Church on Wolf’s Mountain. – Crush” was scribbled out on the small note.
“I wonder what was going on here. And heaven forbid another church issue,” she mumbled to herself as she peeled the note from the surface of the table and placed it in her pocket. Stepping back out into the cubicle space, Dr. Tatum strolled along the hallway to her office, unlocked the door, and booted up the computer at her desk. As she waited for her emails to load, she pulled out the hand-scribbled note again and pondered the possibilities. Her experiences of late had made her feel quite reluctant about going inside any church, and the fact that Crush had taken Pound and Seth with him, she could only imagine that there was some sort of serious development that required backup.
“Why does there have to be a church involved so soon after the Drakthos incident?” she remarked herself again as she shook her head, placed the note back into her pocket, and then started a web search for the Church on Wolf’s Mountain. The search engine provided the information faster than the time it had taken her to type out the name, and within seconds, she had directions and background information about the church to go along with it. “Interesting. That church is two hundred and fifty years old this year. And there is a celebration planned this weekend,” she thought to herself as she printed out the directions on a sheet of paper and turned her computer back off before leaving the room. “I suppose I should see what this is all about. After all, I can always rest tonight when I get back.”
As she walked down the hall to the cubicle area, she passed by the artifact room and stopped. Holding out her hand to touch the knob of the closed door, Dr. Tatum hesitated.
“No. The last time I took something from this room, I lost an agent,” she said to herself as she reasoned her course through. “I’ll go with pepper spray instead. That’ll be enough to take down a preacher or a senator,” she thought with a smile, locked the office, and hopped into her car.
**********
“Crush!” the voice travelled through the foggy soup of the forest. Crush swept his hands awkwardly through the mist, leaving swirling trails of vapor behind. He could hear the voice, but he could see no farther than a few feet in front of his face. When he tried to open his mouth in reply, his lips refused to move and drool leaked out onto his chin.
“How did I get here?” he thought to himself as he stumbled across high roots and fell clumsily to the ground. It took all of the effort that he could muster to roll onto his back so that he could look at the sky. The heavens were a pale green above the branchy ends of the treetops, and the clouds shined red through the mixture of colors that brought infection to mind. The branches seemed to reach out to each other to form a complex and unrecognizable amalgam. Then the form found structure with eight hairy legs and glowing beady eyes, and Crush gasped in the swirling mist at the sight. Unable to move, Crush waited as the arachnid landed its eyes upon him and crawled over to where he lay. Looking down on him, the shadowy figure of the spider reared back as if to bite, but when the fangs fell to his chest, they changed into hands that gripped his shirt.
“Crush!” the voice came again, but this time from the face of the spider as it altered into an elderly man. “Wake up!” the man cried as he gently tapped Crush on the cheeks with an open palm in an effort to stir him from his paralysis. Crush lifted his heavy eyes to look deeply into the familiar face.
“Let me sleep,” Crush begged the old man as he closed his eyes once more.
“Wake up, boy. You aren’t going down like this, are you?” he asked Crush as he shook his arms. “Wake up.”
“Let me be, Dan,” Crush sighed, and then he realized what he had said. Tilting his head back, the slits of his eyes observed the wrinkles and the age of the face, and Crush remembered. He knew that face. “You let me down, Dan. You bit me.”
“Yeah . . . I guess I did,” the old man said in horror at the results of his actions. Then his eyes glazed over, and his mood changed as a shadow passed across his countenance. “It’s nothing to worry about, boss. I’m hungry,” the old man whispered with wicked sincerity. “Take the bones, Crush. I don’t need the bones,” he replied and licked his dry lips. Then the face turned dark and fangs grew out from his jawbones, and the old man that had once stood there faded. A spider took his place, and Crush closed his eyes and waited for the dream to end.
**********
Dr. Tatum followed the directions that she had printed out, and an hour and a half later, she drove into the church parking lot on Wolf’s Mountain. The DAM work truck was there, but no one was in it. In fact no one could be found outside on the church grounds, though there were several other empty vehicles parked in the gravel lot. Pulling up next to the truck, Dr. Tatum searched all around the area for anything suspicious before getting out of the vehicle. Once she was satisfied that all was clear, she opened the door to set her feet on the ground, and she stretched her legs from the long drive from Baltimore. Seeing that she must be alone, Dr. Tatum made her way to the front door of the deserted church and listened for any activity coming from the inside of the building. There were no sounds of conversation, singing, or music that she could detect from her location outside, so she turned the creaking front doorknob and stepped into the foyer. Dim lights brightened up the otherwise drab white and beige room, and the interior doors that separated the foyer from the sanctuary were open. Dr. Tatum considered the options, and using her best judgment, she reluctantly stepped into the sanctuary for a closer look.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” she asked to no one in particular as she observed the beautiful woodwork on the ceiling and the intricate designs on the stain glass windows. No answer was returned so she strode up the aisle to the altar of the empty chamber and sat down on the pew in the front row for a moment. “Someone has to be here,” she thought as she sat alone in solitude. Then a door opened behind the piano on the stage, and a straight laced man in a dress shirt and tie came out with a serving dish full of communion crackers. He walked down the steps of the altar and sat the dish down on a small communion table in front of the podium, never taking notice of his visitor in the front row until she cleared her throat.
“Um-hmm. Are you the reverend of this church?” Dr. Tatum asked boldly. Surprised, the reverend twisted around to see who was talking to him and caught sight of her just a few feet away on the front pew.
“You scared me!” he sighed as he placed his hand over his chest. “I didn’t see you when I came in.” When he had settled down, he answered her question and held out his hand in welcome. “Yes, I’m Reverend Scott, and your name is . . . ?” he asked with a gentle voice.
“Dr. Tatum. I heard about the fifty year celebration, and I decided to visit here today,” she replied as she returned a handshake. “I was expecting some friends to be here as well. They were driving the extended cab truck that’s out in the parking lot. Have you seen them?” Reverend Scott looked out toward the front doors, though he could not see the truck from so far inside the church.
“I haven’t. In fact I have been preparing downstairs for the first night of the fifty-year homecoming, and I haven’t seen anyone else here this evening except yourself,” he said to her as he sat down in the pew a few feet away so as to give her some space. It seemed that Reverend Scott could sense that she had many things on her mind, and as he rested his chin on his hands, he was willing to take a few minutes of his time to listen to her thoughts. “Would you like for me to search the grounds to see if I can find them?”
“That would be great,” Dr. Tatum replied and shot up out of the seat too quickly to hide her angst. “You do know that there are several other cars parked out th
ere as well?” she asked him as she stood proudly in the aisle and waited for him to follow.
“No, I didn’t know,” he said as he stood. “But I was expecting the eight church elders to be here by now,” he continued as he stepped down the aisle, and together they walked out of the sanctuary and into the foyer. Seeing no one else in the building, he opened the front door and stepped outside to find that the parking lot was empty. “Didn’t you say that there was a truck and other vehicles parked out here?” he asked as he turned back to Dr. Tatum with a curious look. With a blank stare, she stared out at the empty lot, and as her eyes cut back and forth across the open space, a very real dread came upon her when she found that even her own car was gone. They both treaded down the front steps, and marched out onto the gravel field in wonder.