Beyond the Web

Beyond the Web

Graham Swanson

 The knife killed the monsters that followed him to his home, killed the puppets with human faces 

waiting in his basement, and killed the things watching him in the attic. He still heard them mounting 

in the dark, slurping the cells from dead flesh, prying up floorboards, and seeking the smell of 

blood. They remained barging against the locked door. His daughter screamed and screamed as they bit 

off one of his fingers and broke his nose. The witch warned him this would happen but he didn’t listen 

to her wisdom, he just drank the elixir from her pot and brought her wood to burn.

Buford came far from his home. The witch somewhere out there laughed at him, her youthful skin swollen with moisture and vitamins, disintegrating to malnourished green cracks and pale red sagging flesh. She told him to find it there over the fencing where the wolves protect the forest.

Buford carried his knife to the well cover in a heaving hurry that pounded wind and pus against his eardrums. The hallow wind blew fog around blackened trees and covered animus tracks with fallen leaves. Creatures of the dark scampered in the thick trenches of garbage water, old men smiled from veils on unlit porches and clouds of smoke. He heard her screaming at him from the other room. The wall muffled her strained clamor of violent ponder, yet he still heard it from the moon and stars.

The cover lifted for him when the clouds circled the moon and the branches formed a lens through which the pale light beamed. It shined on Buford, colored the blood on his arms and cheeks a bright silver, and invoked a salt smoke to lift from the bottom of the well. He looked down to see if any faces of water awaited him, then he took one last look at the knife. The blade forged from the green blood of the last albino spider cut through the webs sealing the well. Strips fell down to the bottom of the well as spiders crawled up Burford’s arm.

The voices from the well mumbled as the opened became clearer with each strike of the knife. The temperature around the well dropped. Everywhere else the leaves dripped and fog rose from pools of sinking rainwater, but as the well opened more and more Burford felt his warm blood steam as it leaked from his ears and eyes. The mist froze around him like soft snow and turned the trees overhead white. His wrist ached and back locked up, enduring the grinding bones and muscles, and kept chopping at the webbing. Spiders crawled into his jacket for warmth. His knife cut through the thick blankets of web-like ropes.

The screams drowned by the wall vibrated as the ground froze to crystals. Buford's waders snapped the blades of grass. He tore out knots of web and tossed it down on the ground. The spiders bit his chest and neck. In the darkness, he barely saw them but felt them tingle the sores on his flesh, the tender scars, and the pus-filled blemishes and rip off pieces of his skin to devour. Tiny hairy legs trembled upwards into his nose and eyes. He smashed the spiders against his face but more climbed from the webbing strewn across his arms and hands back onto his clothes and balding head.

The way almost became clear enough for him to dip his head down, but in the freezing enchantment over the ancient stones, he saw only snow falling in and a whirling lash of dry fog. Buford heard the screaming wall grinding against the ground at wicked speeds. The naked bodies receded back into darkness. When the knife quite cutting the webbing he looked at it again, feeling its handle with frozen numb fingers, he found the blade bent and dulled by layers of oozing web. He screamed into the night under cyclones of blood drops and curtains of fog.

The pommel tassel blew over his wrist. The eye looking after him winked and he felt the witch’s hair against his knuckles and between his fingers. He opened his palm to let the knife drop and a fountain of spiders flowed from the holes in his glove to the ground. The naked faces burst into flame around the well, arranged in a circle, all went quiet as the mist front the well changed to bright green. Buford leaned against the well and breathed it in.

The fog turned to smoke, but it didn’t hurt his lungs like cigarettes. It smelled like warm soot and charred birch sap. He tore off his clothes and watched them crawl away under a million spider legs. The frozen air chipped off the blood on his body. He lowered one foot into the well, then the other. The heat of a radiator warm his bare feet. He lowered himself down then let go of the bricks. The well went down for miles underground, to a tunnel that he crawled under long enough to cover his body in dust. On the other side, he heard the stretching metal of a huge cover larger than a cloud overhead and a warm wooden floor that stretched for miles. He scampered through the dark leaving a trail of filth behind him towards the far light hanging high over the ceiling. He climbed over bails of dust and webs, heard spring rattle above him. He peeked from the high cover to see the light, see where he managed to get to, and it looked like a bedroom, but not his own. He lived in a crack hotel on the outskirts of the factory where he worked as a welder. Wooden panels covered everything, the stitches hanging from the giant bedside look handcrafted, and no power cords divided the room. Oil burned in the lamps and a fireplace on the other side heated the room.

He stepped out to see who slept on the massive bed but he heard an earthshaking scream. “daddy! There’s something scary in my room”

Buford watched a giant spider leap from its covers as a larger, louder spider burst into the room. He dove under a sock but they all saw him skid on the smooth open floor. He felt a million eyes on his back. He knew his only chance was to escape back under the bed but to his horror the tunnel he came in through no longer existed.

“Kill it, daddy! Kill it!”

Across town, Buford’s daughter pretended to sleep comfortably in a big bed surrounded by pillows and stuffed animals. She was too afraid to sleep because she thought she had a dream of her biological father living in the woods dragging her by the hair screaming at her to throw away the clutter of bathing soaps she left in the shower into an ancient well. She almost fell asleep, then awoke screaming into the peace of night and the troubled dream leaked from her memory, but she still heard his screams. It came from under the bed. She looked down and met a spider on the floor. She called on her stepdad to come in. He burst into the door soaking wet only wearing a golden bath towel.

The witch, youthful again with silky black hair and red lips came to the door behind him wearing a fur bathrobe. “Did you have another nightmare?”

“No,” their step daughter whimpered. “I saw a spider. It was big and scary.”

“This old house.” the step dad looked out the window. It began to snow. “It must be the weather. The bugs are getting inside.”

the witch took the stepdad by the shoulder. “It’s gone now, wherever it was.”

“Try to get some rest, sweetheart.” the stepdad told his stepdaughter “Do you need some water or another blanket?”

“No, thanks. I’ll be okay.” He tried to hold back tears and terror. Her stepdad noticed the tense muscles in her face, but decided not to say anything.

“Good night. We’ll have oranges and bacon in the morning.”

“My favorite!”

“that’s right.” The witch smiled, and she brought the stepdad out of the room. “Sweet dreams. We love you.”

The stepdaughter looked out the window cuddling her stuffed animals and watched the snow build up outside. Somewhere out there her real father still looked for her. The scars on her arms and fingers from where his hunting knife slashed her muscles never healed right and still hurt on the night of the attack. Before she fell asleep she thought she saw a shadow at the window of a large spider. A dozen long legs, a hundred eyes, and a shape set of pinchers gleaming in the moonlight like a blade of hot steel.

art: "The Crying Spider" by Odilon Redon, 1881