In the corner of the room where the plaster walls met the paneled ceiling it plucked at the strings.
Spun from it's bulbous ends the web back and forth
Back and forth - rhythmically
Knotting each cross section with dagger-like fingers and then...
Plucking and strumming at its web.
Some of them scuttled across the floor, scavenging between floorboards - dashing behind furniture and through wall cracks as soon as they appeared.
Some of them, spun far reaching - thin and desperate webs. Hoping and praying to catch a fly, or a mosquito - or if it were fortunate enough, another thick and crunchy spider.
Then, there were spiders that built fortresses in the corners of rooms - spending days weaving their way back and forth, noting their strands at any chance they had to fortify their structure.
They were larger, hairier, and louder than the other types of spiders Tom had seen in his family's home.
They ate well - but there were never insects stuck in their trap, so what they ate and grew big on - Tom didn't know.
Their many eyes peered from beneath the thick, sticky sheets of woven string - staring at Tom.
They were hungry eyes - impossibly tiny but black as coal, and glinting with eager anticipation.
They could eat away his nightmares, Tom thought
But then a shudder ran up his back as he imagined 8 legs and their dainty stabbing of his face.
Sleep had been hard to come by as it was so those moments of slumber where Tom would be vulnerable to the poisoned pricks of those spider interlopers which anchored themselves in his room were far and few between.
That didn't stop his mind from whirling though.
It didn't stop the phantoms in their tracks.
When his mind wandered back to Ben - when the will to move or breath or feel had seeped out of his limbs, when he sat there slack jawed and catatonic for those brief respites from grief - he'd begin to feel it.
An itch on his back, or his face.
The itch of tiny hairs tickling his skin
The scuttling scratching.
The pinch of small jagged teeth.
And then there was William - squealing, crying, screeching William.
His brother - who was not his brother - or was? But also not the son of Mildred the same as Tom?
He couldn't keep it straight anymore - truths and fiction blending in the same way the dreams and nightmares he should have been having while asleep began to seep into his waking hours.
The first time he tried to leave him room after - well, after visiting Ben
Tom walked from his room to the stairs and peered down the steps hearing the echo of his voice calling him.
As the slurping misshapen vowels echoed their way to Tom - his eyes glazed over - tears banging at the gate threatening to wash over his face - and the numb, dumb, catatonic trance returned.
His arms were no longer his arms - his body stood immobile and loose in its posture - his head tilted to the left a little too far to be natural and everything looked so far away as if Tom's consciousness had been shrunk and sent to the depths of a deep dark pit just like....
The leaflets of what was and what was not fell from a shelf up on high - figments of imagination snapped to the edges of reality.
The staircase was not as it was just mere seconds ago - no, no, no - please god no Tom thought as he snapped to.
The banister was covered in the dusty glowing alien-like foliage Tom called Bone blooms - the steps jagged rock - the ceiling dripped with green algae water - and from deep within the recesses of the living room that Tom had known to be just to the left of the bottom of the stairs he could here his name being called - he felt his summons.
Tom could,
Feel his heart,
Racing,
Just the way it had,
Before.
He lifted his left foot - it hovered in the air, quivering with adrenaline as it anticipated the fall to the second step.
[Monstrous Spider Scuttling]
His eyes bulged even wider as his eyelids peeled back further in terror -
What.....
Was that?
[Giggling baby]
William.
The baby that was always heard but never seen - William who crawled away and hid under floor boards and behind furniture - William who ensnared Tom's mother... or rather Mildred and his sister... or perhaps not his sister but Peggy who he loved all the same in his desperate trap. William who'd made the LaPonte home his fortress - where he would grow big and fat - his tiny mouth of jagged teeth -
Just,
Watching,
And waiting.
Out from behind the wall separating the front foyer and the staircase from the living room, one giant razor tipped spider leg slowly peaked out and into sight.
It gingerly set down on the wood floor as another curled out sideways quietly stabbing the wall.
Then the third and fourth leg - just as slow as the others crept forward.
Large coarse brown hair stuck out from the joints in the bent limbs like porcupine quills, and then the sickly, mucus dripping mouth and endless eyes peered lidless and twitching.
As the nightmarish arachnid leveled itself - turning to him - Tom stood, eyes nearly popped from his head - and his mouth turned upside down into a silent scream.
The monstrous arachnid lunged at Tom, but stopped just short. It's fangs rubbed against one another like tiny hands eager to make a deal.
The massive thing which confronted Tom raised it's two front legs high above him - as that breathing nightmare leveled its many many eyes with Tom's own.
The fangs stopped their neurotic kneading as they peeled back exposing a beak like orifice underneath
Tom closed his dry eyes - wetting himself
He could feel the breath on his face - he imagined inside that beak were more teeth which wanted to shred him one strip at a time to flay him alive.
[loud giggling]
Peggy standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up only saw her older brother Tom looking down, eyes bursting from their sockets - his mouth in almost cartoonish fright - wetting his pants.
At first she thought he was looking at her, but as she inched closer she could see Tom was...
Not home.
His eyes were fixed and unmoving - standing where she thought he was staring she could see he was looking past it all - that he was somewhere else.
Peggy quietly crept up the stairs and reached with her small soft hand - wrapping it around Tom's which hung at his side.
Surprisingly his fingers slowly gripped and tighten on Peggy's hand. It hurt as the force pushed her knuckles to grind against one another but she swallowed the pain.
It was her turn to be strong
Her turn to protect her brother.
Peggy slowly pulled Tom away from his perch at the top of the staircase looking down - and without forcing - pulled just enough to suggest to Tom's unconscious to follow where it was being led.
It didn't happen at first but his feet began to shuffle as his core instinctually followed the gravity of his sister's pull.
Peggy was patient and kind - lovingly guiding Tom back to the safety and comfort of his bed. She treated him as if he were sleepwalking.
She was aware he'd been staying up the last few nights - she'd heard him pacing in time with William's nightly cries - and assumed exhaustion had finally come for him.
She hoped it was nothing more.
As they reached his room
Peggy lept up onto Tom's bed and dragged his comforter up - rubbing it against his hand and pulling a corner of it up into the crook of his neck.
Hoping much like she had in the hallway to appeal to a part of Tom that might respond.
And once again he did - slowly raising his arms - his fingers grabbed onto the ratty blanket - clawing at it and tying themselves in its folds.
She pressed down on Tom's shoulders and without much hesitation his time he teetered forward and into bed.
And that's where he'd been ever since - watching the spider in the corner of his room fortifying his woven kingdom. Remembering the sound of William's dreadful giggling.
...
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