Scary Stories - Twist in the Tale Series

The Web

The web was huge.It occupied a full quarter of the large window, spanning all ofthe outside of one bottom pane. The spider must have finished itwhile Charlie slept, for it was complete now: a miracle ofintertwined silken threads radiating from a central hub in aseries of equally spaced, progressively greater polygonsconnected by fanning spokes. So precise and symmetrical was itsdesign and so marvellously mathematical that it had a crystallineappearance, as if it were a cross-section of a fabulous whitegemstone.

Frost had coated its intricate tracery during the night,enamelling every strand with an even icy layer. The sharp wintersun highlighted its geometric immaculacy, made it shimmer as itwas wafted by a soft breeze and caused it to scintillate as if itwere powdered with diamond dust.
Each and every silken ligature, thickened and spangled by rimycrystals, captured and reflected the sunlight and made the wholegauzy construction incandescent with cold fire.

Young Charlie couldn't help but wonder at the sheer beauty of theweb as he lay gazing at it from his bed facing the window. Itstwinkling frozen patina gave it the appearance of being fashionedfrom fine silver wires; made of it a precious ornament studdedwith tiny, glittering stones.

It was a delicate filigree crafted by a master silversmith: anold, old man of long experience and infinite patience completelywedded to his craft. This aged artist's gnarled, skilled fingersmust have knotted and twisted and twined for days the preciousthreads into their complex design. Fragile frame stooped overordered workbench; his keen eyes squinting through thickspectacles, guiding those painstaking digits with sure precisionas they wove and wound, slowly working the shiny filaments intowhat, surely, must be his final creation. For, the last twistturned, the last knot secured, then the old man must have died.

All his long life he had striven for perfection, this ancientcraftsman, obstinately fighting age and time to produce the oneflawless piece that would be his lasting signature on this world.And at last, with this glistening masterpiece, he had achieved it.So, what more had he to cling to existence for?

Death had hovered at his shoulder for such a long time, waitingever so patiently to claim what was his. Unusually, full knowingthat no one ever escaped his clutches in the end, he had allowedthe old man the rare and singular grace of his benevolence. Thesilversmith's determination to produce the ideal in ornamentalart, determination so strong he would even try to postpone hisfinal appointment, had touched Death in that place where livingbeings had a heart. It had pleased him, for reasons of his own,to let the old man believe he could thwart him, to permit him tostruggle on with his fine, hair-thin silver wires until he wasfinally satisfied there was nothing more he could add - there wasno way he could better this, his final work.

Then, as the old man sat back from his bench to admire hiscraftsmanship, then too as he suddenly became aware of thathollow emptiness that only comes when one has achieved a long-heldambition and realises that there is nothing left to do - thatmoment when one begins to wonder what it was all for - so Deathtouched him.

It wasn't an aggressive action. Death simply leaned over and puthis bony hand on the silversmith's bony hand - he would even havesmiled if he knew how. The old man looked up at the dark figureand he did smile, for now he knew what it was all for. Withoutdemurring, without the slightest protestation the old silversmithrose from his chair, gave his masterpiece one last, lingeringglance, then, hand-in-hand, he went where Death would lead him.

It was just at that moment, as the vision of the old silversmithand his companion began to fade from Charlie's mind's eye, thatthe web jerked with an abruptness too violent to be caused by thegentle breeze. It was a sharp, yanking movement that set theentire structure into quivering motion. The whole networktrembled and shook as if it had a life of its own.

The sudden agitation sent vibrations through the web that madeits radiating spokes appear to spin like a wheel. This caused thecoating of frost particles on the twirling strands to twist andturn, presenting ever-changing facets to the sun, which light wasrefracted in tiny, multicoloured flashes. To Charlie thiskaleidoscopic effect was hypnotic, compelling. As he stared atthe mesmerising rainbow sparkles, the spinning, whirling actionseemed to get stronger, faster. The boy's eyes became fixed,unblinking; he was incapable of tearing them away from theentrancing Catherine wheel the web had become. It tugged at him,pulled him.

He found himself caught up in the rapid spiralling motion,turning with it; felt himself drawn, like an iron filing to amagnet, to the centre of the web. The blankets fell from him, andhe was lifted from the bed, twisting like a leaf in the wind. Hebecame smaller and lighter, shrunken to a tiny atom. The roomshifted, and he was no longer below the web, but above, lookingdown on it. The web was a massive spinning wheel, it was theentire universe, and he was being carried spinning and spinninginto its heart like water down a drain.

Larger and larger the web grew, as he was carried closer andcloser to it. Falling, falling, end over end, ever nearer thespinning centre. The threads of silk became thick cords, thenropes, then cables, then massive girders, all cartwheeling andcorkscrewing madly around him at ever more sickening speed.

The centre loomed ever nearer and Charlie tried to fight itsirresistible pull; struggled and kicked as it grew closer; triedwith all the power in his now minute body to reverse hisplummeting descent. For he saw that the centre was a deep blackhole, so deep, it went down and down forever, and he knew once hefell into it he would never stop falling.

He was at the very lip of the hole now, and he could see howutterly dark it was, so dark it looked solid, and he began tobelieve that he would not fall after all, but be smashed topieces on the unyielding blackness of it.

Then, when all his vision was filled with dark, when he hadceased his useless fighting and given himself up to it, the web'smad whirl slowed. For a moment he hung suspended above the hole,weightless, floating, a speck of dust over a sea of black. He wasnothing, and the darkness was all.

As abruptly as it had started, the web's mad spinning stopped. Itwas as if a monstrous foot had slammed down on a brake, or as ifthe earth had come to a sudden, jolting standstill. For a splitsecond that stretched on for aeons, all was utterly still. Thenoise of life being lived in the world outside, normally unheardby its very familiarity, became deafening by its silence, as ifthe whole planet was holding its breath. Even the blood in theboy's veins ceased its noisy rushing, his heart stopped pumping,and his thoughts halted their passage through the folds of hisbrain.

And Charlie was flung from the web's core.

It was just like that. No warning was given. One moment, absolutedeathly immobility, the next, hurtling, headlong flight. For, asrapid as his fall into the centre of the web had been, his returnwas faster. He did not spin and turn this time, but was shot,like a bullet from a gun.

Headfirst, he sliced through the air, air that whistled inprotest at its forced parting. His longish, curly hair was sweptback from his head, straightened by the wind, the flesh of hisface was stretched and pulled, giving him the look of a clench-toothed,grinning maniac. His body too seemed to stretch, to elongate asif his feet were having difficulty keeping up to his head, as ifhe was being wrenched apart by the speed.

He was going to be burned up, he could feel his body gettinghotter and hotter. Soon his pyjamas would catch fire and he wouldblaze like a flaming torch through the air until he fell to theground, blackened and cindery like a dead matchstick. Eitherthat, or he would be shot through the bedroom wall, across thelanding, then through the next wall, and the next, and the next...

But no. Suddenly he was back in bed. Under the blankets, warm andsnug, his body neither tiny nor stretched, and not burned.Charlie looked at himself in bewilderment; at the room that wasback the right way up; at the window that was back where italways was - at the web that swayed and sparkled harmlessly inthe breeze.

Just a dream. Just a silly waking-dream. Brought on by hisillness, by his fears... by his secret.

The web did have a sort of Svengali effect, though. When itstirred like that it almost started spinning again; and therewere flashes of colour when the light caught it just so - prettycolours, dancing and twirling...

Charlie tore his eyes away, he could feel them becoming fixed andwide, his head light and floaty - the web was pulling him again.He did so with reluctance. It was such a pleasant sensation: warmand comforting. Yet at the same time it was frightening:demanding and powerful. He shuddered, and as his gaze left theweb he recalled the blackness there at its heart; remembered how- just before he was thrown from it... cast out... rejected - hehad accepted the dark, wanted to be a part of it, to be as onewith it.

Shaking his head, Charlie sat up in bed and made a determineddecision not to look at that spooky old web hanging outside hiswindow again. It was just too scary. Instead, after anothersurreptitious check of the room to ensure that everything reallywas as it should be, he switched his attention to his regularmorning self-assessment. After a sort of inner self-inventory,consisting of mentally examining and appraising the various partsof his body, he declared himself to be quite well. Certainlybetter than he'd been for several days - he might even be able toget out of bed today.

True, he felt a little weak and sick, and a bit shaky too, butthen, he usually did; and the dream - or whatever it had been -wouldn't have helped. His chest was clear though, and that wasthe main thing. He even felt hungry - perhaps he could managesome breakfast.

Mum would be up soon to give him his morning physio before Val,the home help, came and she, his mother, rushed off to work. Mumwould be so pleased to see he was so much better. He couldn'thelp but notice how ragged she looked lately; he realised howmuch the strain was getting to her. He had been bedridden moreand more this last year, and he knew she suffered as much as he.He felt so sorry for her.

A sad little smile played on Charlie's thin lips as he recalledhow when he was younger he'd felt so proud to know such grown-upsounding words as cystic fibrosis, to not only know the words,but also understand them. Such knowledge had made him somehowsuperior to his schoolfellows, who were still struggling withtheir first primers - made him different.

Now he was older and he was too sick to go to school he didn'tfeel so superior any more. Now if anything he thought himself amember of a private club. As such, he recognised his illness byits initials, CF - as did the experts who knew everything aboutit but how it felt to have it. Funny how two little letterssounded less threatening than the full title. As if you coulddiminish a deadly disease by diminishing its name. If only youcould make the words vanish altogether - and the disease with it.

Charlie realised he was getting bitter and sad. That wouldn't doif he were to cheer up Mum. He would make sure he ate thismorning: that would please her more than anything. He had beensurviving mostly on his vitamin and protein supplements recently- he'd seen the worry on her face at every untouched plate. Shewould go off to work happy if she knew he had a full stomach.She'd...

Was it his imagination, or did he seem a lot thinner? His armswere skin and bone and, though he didn't lift the blankets tolook, he was sure his legs were the same. And what about hisribs? They stood out like the divisions on a toast rack. He waswasting away. He couldn't have lost so much weight in the week orso of his current bad spell. It just wasn't possible. It was hiseyes playing tricks on him again; like they had when he'd staredtoo long at that spider's web...

The web...

It was wonderful, despite its eeriness. It was amazing howsomething so simple could be so complicated. Its closely woventracery, so exquisitely symmetrical, could only have beendesigned on a drawing board. The construction was too exact to bethe work of a dumb creature. That he knew this last to be in factthe case, Charlie immediately rejected in favour of the earliermore appealing picture he'd painted himself of the venerable oldsilversmith as the actual creator of the crinoline-like arabesque.Far better, the romantic notion of kindly human hands behind itsmanufacture than the truth of its real originator - the spider.

The spider had appeared late yesterday - fat and nasty - asCharlie had been gazing out of the window from his bed at passingclouds. He had been far away, in a land of castles and dragonsinspired by the shapes he saw in the rolling grey formations,when it had intruded, rudely and unannounced, upon his fantasies.As if from nowhere, it had suddenly arrived. One moment it wasn'tthere; the next it was - staring at him like a hairy Peeping Tom.Its eyes - all eight of them - had been locked on his: glitteringlittle beads, shining with an intelligence it had no right topossess.

All things creepy-crawly revolted Charlie, but spiders inparticular gave him the shivers. They were such sneaky creatures:insinuating themselves where they weren't wanted, and evading allattempts to evict them so cunningly. They had such an evil lookabout them - a sort of demonic quality - with their horns andfangs and their finger-like legs. No wonder they featured in somany horror stories. This one, the builder of the web, was anespecially loathsome example of the species. It was enormous, forone thing; quite the largest Charlie had ever seen, and black assin - he felt glad of the reassuring thickness of glass betweenit and him. Somehow though, he wished the barrier were stronger,even thicker. To his mind the spider looked quite powerful enoughto break its way through, to smash the glass and get in the room...get to him.

However, the most frightening thing about the spider was the wayit had looked at him. Its eyes - those gleaming, knowing eyes -bored into him, penetrated his skull and knew his thoughts, hisweaknesses, his fears... his secrets.

After holding Charlie's gaze for an eternity, the spider had atlong last looked away as if dismissing him. It was as though ithad learned all it needed to and was finally satisfied. The boyremembered how drained he had felt afterwards, as if somethinghad been taken from him, sucked out of him. He remembered too,how before its eyes left him he'd got the impression it wasn'tdone with him; that it would return its attention to him later,in its own good time. Meanwhile, it had begun to build its web,and took no further notice of the boy.

What lured a spider's prey into the sticky net of its web?Charlie found it difficult to understand how an insect, allunknowing, could simply blunder in totally unaware of the risk itwas taking. That gave them credit for less sense than theyactually possessed. They certainly couldn't be looking for foodamong the deadly threads; there was none there. Their eyesightwas good; so it wasn't that they simply did not see where theywere going. Surely they could sense danger there? Yet a spidercould always be certain of trapping a tasty morsel in its clevermesh.

Perhaps it was the same fascination that tempted the unwary flythat also drew Charlie? Was the spider's victim influenced by theweb's tantalisingly hypnotic allure as he was? Entranced andbeguiled, were they compelled to its heart, only to be snared bythe enfolding strands before they ever reached it, a helplessmeal for the spider when it chose to take it?

If you stared hard at it without blinking the web seemed to moveeven when it was still. It was a steady, in-and-out pulsing,almost like a heartbeat. Charlie felt himself rocking back andforth in sympathy with it. On each breath in, it appeared to cometowards him; when he breathed out, it receded, as if it wasrespiring along with him. Charlie sat up in his bed, his eyes bigand staring, swaying to and fro in time to his breathing like adevout at prayer. It was soothing, soporific, relaxing; heenjoyed the sensation and went along willingly with it. It wasseveral minutes before it filtered through to him that what hehad assumed an optical illusion was reality. The web really wasmoving.

Like one of those spinners he'd often played with - those round,coloured cards attached to string that you pulled to make thedisk revolve - that was how the web was behaving. It wasn't thecrazy, wild spinning of before though, but gentle, smooth, calm.It did not maintain a steady, continuous speed either, but cycledrhythmically from almost a complete stop to rapid, even circling,then back again, over and over, as if someone was pulling itsstring regularly and repeatedly with exactly the same force.

But it wasn't a gaudily coloured circle cut from a cereal box; itwas a thing of silk, exquisitely spun with malign purpose. Therewere no strings attached to it either; only the thin lines thatheld it to the window frame. Neither was there anyone to produceits metronomic, bewitching revolutions.... no one human that is.

It was as these thoughts were occurring to Charlie that there wasa sudden scuttling at the glass, as from some hidden lair in thebrickwork surrounding the window the spider slyly emerged.

Startled, the boy ceased his swaying and became rigid. He wasn'tshocked so much by the sight of the creature, though that wasfrightening enough, but by it appearing when it did - on theinstant he thought of it. A picture of the spider had no soonerformed in his mind, when... there it was: large as life - largerthan - and several times uglier, as if summoned by his thoughts,plucked from his imagination and given actuality.

He watched awe-stricken as, heavily and with some difficulty, thespider secured a perch for itself on the window frame, rested onehair-covered leg on a supporting strand of the web, stopping itsspinning dead, and sat, motionless, looking in on him.

Strange... it looked much bigger than yesterday.... fatter,huger, as if it had grown.

No! That was ridiculous. It couldn't have grown overnight. It hadcaught nothing in its web that Charlie knew of. No incautiousinsect had strayed into its clutches for it to gorge on - hewould have seen it if it had. Even if it had eaten, that wouldn'taccount for such an increase in size...

Don't be silly... it isn't any bigger. It was just his eyesplaying games with him again...

It did seem to have grown, though.

Charlie wished the spider would stop looking at him that way. Itseyes were like hot needles burning into his, piercing, scorching.No matter how he tried, he couldn't turn away from them.

Its eyes had grown with its body. They were the size of buttons.Big, glowing lenses, sucking his... sucking his brain...

No! It hadn't grown. Neither had its eyes. It was the sun on theglass, magnifying it, making it monstrous.

Please! Oh please. Stop staring at me!

But the spider kept on staring, its eyes transfixing Charlie,holding him. It might have been minutes, or hours, or longer,that the two of them remained locked together; there was no senseof the passing of time. Charlie stopped thinking, his mind blank,shut down. There was nothing else on earth but he and the spider.No cars rushing by outside; no people going about their dailybusiness; no streets and houses... no world... no life.

This might have gone on forever, this nothingness, but then thespider finally made a move. With the leg that had all the timerested on the web-strand, its eyes never once leaving Charlie, itgave a single, sharp downward twang to the fine line.

The way the web had spun before was as nothing to the way it spunnow. It spun with a ferocity that rattled the window - caused thewindow itself to spin too - caused the entire wall to spin.

As it spun, the web grew and spread. It was like a live thing:strands of silk, like tentacles reached out, wound about eachother, extending an ever-expanding net. The faster it spun, themore it grew. Soon - amazingly soon - it encompassed the wholewindow, then the whole wall. The wall was the web; the web wasthe wall.

Charlie was swept from his blank oblivion into a swirling oceanof hurt and pain. A roaring, howling wind battered around hisears and thundered in his head, steel bands clamped about hischest and tightened, a raging fire burned deep inside him. Theenormous, spinning web was sucking the air from the room, fromout of his lungs.

He felt a massive pressure on his breast, as if a giant hand waspushing him back. He tried to resist it but it kept pushing,stronger and stronger. Soon he could fight it no more, and gavein to it, let it push. It pushed harder and harder, down and down.He was flat on his back and it pushed all the more, as if itwould drive him through the bed.

Still he could not drag his eyes from the wall-sized web. Itfilled his entire vision like a gigantic wheeling disc, rotatingso fast it was almost solid white - all that is, except for alarge black dot that marked its centre, round which the restrevolved.

Charlie knew now - if ever he doubted it - that it was the spiderthat had made the web spin before: as it was spinning it know. Heknew too that it had built its web for him, that he was its preyand it meant to capture him and devour him, suck out his insidesand leave him a dry, lifeless husk.

As if this realisation was a signal, there came a change to theweb. The dark central dot began to grow. Like a stain it spread,a rapidly expanding circle of the blackest black - the blacknessof negativity - in a greater circle of purest white that was thewhirling silk mesh.

The darkly spreading centre grew quickly. Bigger and bigger, itswallowed the web, leaving inky blackness in its wake. Soon itconsumed all that had previously been white. And where there hadonce been wall, there was only deep, black emptiness.

So dark was this emptiness that every midnight since time startedwas condensed into it. It was as if the wall had been sliced off,and the terrified boy was lying in a three-sided room containingthe only light and life left in the universe, from which helooked out on the fathomless depths of outer space.

Despite that the spinning white of the web was now gone and thedarkness in its place was dense and pitchy black, almost palpablysolid, still there was a sense of motion. It was as though thedarkness too whirled and swirled and spun. A churning blackvortex, its focus a far distant point in the furthermost reachesof remoteness, Charlie could feel it clutch and pull as if itwould drag him, his room, the house, and everything into itsnucleus. The pressure on his chest still pinning him to the bed,he tightly gripped the mattress at either side of him and waitedto be sucked out - bed and all - into the shifting blackness:sucked out like the thinning air he gasped desperately for.

Then, when he was sure his lungs must explode; when his visionbegan to blur and his mind cloud over; when he felt certain thatnow he was going to die, and that nothing more could happen tohim, a shape began to emerge from the middle of the darkemptiness, from that place where the darkness was darkest of all.Travelling at impossible speed towards him through the blacknessfrom some incredible distance away, the shape, indistinct andunidentifiable at first, a vague small shadow in the greaterdarkness, swiftly grew and took form.

Desperately Charlie tried to back away from the advancing shape,knowing before his failing eyes recognised it what it must be,but his paralysed body refused to obey him. He could only lie andhelplessly watch as the darkness coalesced around the tiny butswiftly growing points of light, became still darker as itgathered there in barely discernible outline on the edge ofvisibility. More of the darkness was drawn on and absorbed,solidifying as it did so and giving substance to the emergingform, as from its amorphous beginnings the shape rapidly resolveditself into that which it could only be.

Soon, terrifyingly soon, the shape was defined and complete. Thespider, much bigger than before for all its apparent distanceaway, sped out of the dark from which it was born - of which itwas made. Formed from such ephemeral stuff, but looking much morepowerful and infinitely more menacing, it was the distillation ofCharlie's every worst nightmare.

Still it assimilated more and more of the darkness into itself:feeding on it; taking sustenance from it; growing more monstrousas the distance between it and him lessened. Rushing towards himlike a huge, silent express train down an invisible, endlesstrack - vaster, ever vaster, grew the spider as it hurtledtowards him, its speed accelerating as it approached.

Charlie shrank into himself, attempted to make himself smallerjust as the spider loomed ever larger. His mouth stretched wide,he tried to scream but could only manage a weak, bubbling noise.Legs and arms flailing, he struggled to get off the bed, but theblankets conspired against him and bound him down as if they hadbecome ropes.

Still the spider kept coming, and still it kept growing.

Until, on the very threshold of his room, it stopped. The last ofthe darkness flowed into it like wisps of smoke, and there itcrouched, glowering with eyes like searchlights down on thehorrified boy.

Ridiculously, a scene from an old black and white film he'd oncewatched on TV played across Charlie's mind. In the film agigantic gorilla had terrorised an American city while ant-likehumans waged war on it. The film had scared him, despite itscrude effects and the obvious, unconvincing models that were usedto enhance the impression of the ape's size. The part that hadscared him most of all was when the giant beast had lookedthrough the window of a skyscraper into a room. This was justlike that. Only this was real.

In the film the oversized monkey had reached an enormous paw intothe room and snatched a woman as if she were a doll. Now thespider was going to do the same to him.

What was it waiting for? Why didn't it get it over with?

The spider merely poised there, staring at him. He could see hisreflection mirrored in its eyes. How pathetic he looked; howsmall and helpless and insignificant. He must look to it like thespider had to him before their roles were reversed. He wished hecould scurry away from it, like it would have scurried from himwhen things were normal; when his giant foot could have reducedit to a stain on the floor.

It was as if the spider was savouring its new position. It had noneed to hurry. The boy was powerless; it could bide its time.Meanwhile, his fear was delicious; much more substantial thanthat of its usual prey.

Charlie could see the spider's enormous sides heaving gently asit breathed; the hairs on its body a dark forest you could getlost in. Its antennae waved in the air, long leathery whips thatcould flay the skin off you. Two of its legs rested in front ofit, ready to propel its towering bulk forward: huge, tree-sized,with pointed, horny tips like wicked claws. Great, beak-likemandibles thrust from its massive head, disgustingly drooling asit greedily eyed him. There was an evil, malignant humour on itsface and in its saucer eyes, as if it were enjoying some vast,cosmic joke. Its sadistic pleasure was obvious: it delighted inCharlie's impotence, his defencelessness, his puny frailty.

Charlie knew how a fly must feel when a creature like thisadvanced on it, how futile it must feel as it resigned itself toits fate. He wanted to gibber and beg, but knew how useless thatwould be and merely shivered, fear-struck, like the helplessinsect he had become.

It was then that the spider rose up on its legs, its mammoth headreached into the room, and its jaws opened wide. And, at last,Charlie was able to scream. To scream out loud with every ounceof his soul, as that cavernous, gaping hole of a mouth drew nearhim and he was hit by a blast of foul, fetid breath, soputrescent he gagged and choked between his cries. Then hescreamed anew as he saw the rows of jagged, broken razor bladesthat were the spider's teeth.

Time slowed as gradually, inch by inch, the spider's head camedown over the bed. It could have snatched him with one quickbite; but no, that would have been too easy - much too fast. Itchose to prolong his torment - make him suffer that much longer.

Charlie writhed on the bed, knowing there was no escape now. Thenoxious breath of the beast smothered his screams. His eyes werefilled with the sight of its tunnel-like throat. He heardlaughter - not in his ears, but in his head: deep, echoinglaughter, such as might be heard coming from the end of a long,long, tiled corridor in a madhouse.

Slowly, oh so slowly, the yawning maw descended.

And then it closed over him. And...

"... Charlie!"

"Charlie!"

Gasping. Gasping. Must get some air.

Darkness. Stifling hot thick suffocating darkness.

"Charlie!"

"Charlie!"

He was buried in enveloping, mushy softness. His face was coveredin it. He couldn't breath. His lungs were on fire. His body wasshaking to the thud of a giant heartbeat.