CreepyPasta

One Windy Night

Jack winced at the thought, then smiled as an idea came to his mind, An army of shadows, eh? That's a pretty good idea! he thought, feeling the embryo of a story start to form.

He had only made it three steps to his desk when the breeze hit his bare neck, he gave a muffled yelp and turned around to find the window open again. Jack stood rooted to the spot, a feeling of dread welling up inside him.

He took one faltering step towards the window, then another, one more step and he was at the casement, It couldn't have been the wind, it's not that strong and I know I locked the window latch.

Jack reached out and shut the window again, this time he latched it and pressed down to make sure it stuck, then he turned back and went to his desk where he stared at the screen, trying to get his fear out onto the printed word.

When nothing came to him he sighed and went back to the kitchen, when he came within sight of the counter he stopped and stared: the bag of brown sugar was split open and the sugar was spilled over the countertop.

Jack moved closer and lifted the bag up to see several long slashes in the plastic.

He looked down and saw several sets of small tracks in the sugar. So there's an animal in the house. he thought, unable to repress a shudder at the thought of a raccoon or a rat in his cottage. He was not in any way an animal person, he hadn't been ever since he was 10, when he had been attacked by a feral dog.

I have to go call animal control. He turned and let out a stunned, "What?"

The window was open again.

"What the hell?" he said as he walked closer. Feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

Fear has a way of heightening the senses, it's the reason why so many people get "bad feelings" before a disaster, why many survivors of animal attacks can recall feeling predatory eyes watching them from the darkness and how one can sense a presence with them where none can be seen.

Now fear had heightened Jack's senses to their peak.

He could see the dust motes hanging in the air like snowflakes suspended mid-fall, he could smell the old wood and the cracked vinyl of the couch that sat near his desk, he could hear every little creak and groan that the old cottage made and he could taste the remnants of his breakfast which clung to his teeth

He stepped up to the window and noted with no small amount of irrational fear that the wind had stopped, he reached up and slowly closed the window again, wincing as his hyper-sensitive fingers scraped across the rough wood of the frame, he clicked the latch shut and then started to turn.

That's when he saw the curtain move—saw it move even though the wind had died down.

He stopped and felt his chest tighten, he looked into the hazy darkness behind the silk curtain and saw something moving slowly upwards, something that was big and almost as black as the shadows in which it crawled... almost.

Jack watched in the kind of horrified awe that forces someone to watch a car accident or a train wreck as the thing crawled up beyond the curtain and came into the light.

It looked like a tarantula, but no—most arachnids had only eight legs, this one had far more, each leg was long, pencil-thin and possessed far too many joints, each leg was topped by what looked like a talon of some kind.

Jack couldn't see the spider-thing's eyes, but it had to have them, considering he felt like it was watching him.

With shocking speed the spider-thing sprang from its place on the wall to land in the shadows of the far left of the room, Jack gave a surprised yelp and leaped back, he whirled around and found that the spider-thing had vanished into the shadows.