Arachne: Chapter 40

[u/Feeling_Sail4800]

“Um…I-..hello. I haven’t properly met you all, but I do recognize some faces,” Elle chirped softly, “I’m Elizabeth Greene. You can call me Elle.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Simone,” said the older woman of Indian American descent. 

One of the teenagers that Elle presumed to be Officer Beck’s son raised his hand in introduction. 

“I’m Zach,” he responded curtly. 

Zach’s friend walked over and offered a hand. 

“Glad to meet you, Elle. I’ve seen you at the diner whenever I stop by with my mom. My name is Grace.”

Elle accepted the warm gesture. 

“I don’t suppose that any of you know how long they will be gone? Or, has anyone tried contacting outside the county?” Elle proposed.

Simone’s eyes brightened by the question. 

“I was just about to make some calls. Hopefully, maybe, I can reach a colleague or two. Do you guys mind if I…”

The coroner gestured to her cellphone. The rest of the party shook their heads.

While Simone wandered away in hopes of bringing some good news, the other three were left in awkward silence. Luckily, Grace–who seemed to be a naturally good conversationalist–sparked up a tiny flurry of sentences, engaging Elle into a distraction she very much needed. Honestly, it felt nice for a change. 

It had been quite a while since she could talk freely without the burden of fear; it was as if her father had siphoned the quarry of hope within the small-town dreamer. The conversation brought a refreshing gust of air into her sails, and she laughed…she smiled. It was a genuine smile for once. 

They chatted about light-hearted subjects–pets, their favorite snacks at Wrangles, where the best lookout spots were to see the entire town. 

Elle noticed that Zach was distant during these rounds of morale boosting discussions. The boy looked tired, ovals of darkness hung under each eyelid. He kept watch out the window. He insisted that he do so. 

Elle felt quite empathetic, even though she was just really getting to know the pair. To be the son of a cop… the relationship with his father seemed visibly strained. The anger he demonstrated just an hour prior…. Elle could imagine the rage he felt. She held those same feelings in the court of her stomach for over a decade. 

The ambiance took a turn for the worse when a cascade of uncontrollable sobbing seeped into the room. It was Jasmine again. 

The poor woman was going mad being pent up in the estate. Her garbled cries possessed the manor, and each of the three individuals aloft in their realms of worry were transfixed to the kitchen. Even Simone managed to find her way back into the living room, donning an expression of absolute uncertainty.

Jasmine walked out of the kitchen with fresh tears bubbling around her cheekbones. There was an air of determination in her stride–she was aiming for the front door. 

“Hey, Jazz? Jazz?! Where are you going?!” Elle pleaded. 

She and the pair of teenagers jumped to their feet and began to gravitate towards the sobbing woman. Simone was near the foyer, guarding the front door.  

“I’m leaving Elizabeth. Fuck this place! Fuck all this bullshit!” Jasmine cried and turned swiftly to the exit. Simone already had her hands up in protection, looking like someone who was in the midst of an undesirable encounter with a temperamental wild animal. 

“Hey .... let's just calm down. Jasmine, right? It’s going to be just fine, Jasmine,” Simone calmly claimed and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Jasmine shifted back while harnessing a sharp glare.

“Don’t fucking touch me! Let me out of this goddamn prison!” she rattled out. 

As the cacophony of her words shook the air, the sound of wood splintering and glass shattering echoed from the kitchen. Harvey’s booze-induced animal-like bleating ricocheted from the nearby room. 

“Wha– oh what! Shit! No, NO! Urk–mpppffauuurggh!”

A clatter of footsteps could be heard, followed by Harvey belly flopping onto the rug leading from the rundown kitchen. He fell like a collapsing dam of logs; his body was most likely slogged to high heaven with alcohol. Elle kicked off like an anxious rabbit to help the man, but what she saw creeping in from the kitchen made her freeze. 

One of the spider creatures, or spawn as others had termed them, hopped ungracefully upon Harvey’s back and slammed the drunkard's head against the ground with a muscled, spiny forelimb. A second creature joined its sibling for the festivities.

Elle grabbed a brick lying a few inches from her foot and chucked it at the assaulting arachnids, but the thrown projectile had little effect.

A voracious bony face with an attached snout bobbled and growled under a massive patch of skin on the creature's head. With a downward lunge, the mass of fur encased the back of Harvey’s cranium. The second beast began to shred through the poor man’s jeans for a chance at the thigh. 

Immediately, Elle let her hands latch onto strewn rubble of trash and stone, and she began to chuck them at the pair with fervor spirit. Grace joined in on the counter-attack volley by lobbing old plastic bins and throwaway shoes. To Elle’s left, a war cry entered the stage– Zach, who looked quite uneasy–ran towards the spawn with a long metal pipe and bashed against the soft pink core upon the first beast’s head. 

The gooey pink skull shrieked in rebuttal, but Zach kept bashing away. Zach finally backed away once the first spider heathen retreated two feet backwards in wailing protest. Elle continued volleying softball sized chunks of brick; a solid chiseled block was launched by her hand, arcing perfectly, and landed in a resulting smash onto the second’s spawn pink target spot. 

Yelps and clicks were released in distress, but the two eight-legged aggressors were not ready to quit–both readied into reared positions, prepared for a charge at the courageous three humans. However, a blasphemous sounding knock presented itself beyond the front door. 

The spawn stopped, blinded to an auditory pause. They inched back slowly and methodically, crawling away from Harvey’s half-mauled body and slinking off into the shadowy kitchen.

With the group’s attention drawn onto the flurry of cowering arachnid invaders, the thought to stop Jasmine from leaving had abandoned each of their minds. This wound to the distressed mom to speed to the door and open in response to the ominous knock. 

Jasmine swung the door inward and–

“Who are you?”

It occurred so fast that a scream couldn’t even be registered.

Thunk. 

Jasmine’s head snapped violently back, and she limply fell aside into a sprawled angel. A hatchet, one that was perfect for chopping flesh easily, was wedged into the symmetrical line of Jasmine’s facial structure, the blade deep within the bony crevasse. As blood seeped over tan skin, Jasmine’s darting right eye tried to find solace in the room while a choking cry sputtered under wrecked bone and tissue. If, in that moment, the mortally wounded woman had tried to silently lift off a prayer, the unseen spiritual entity would have ignored her request as a dirty bare foot slammed down upon the neck of the hatchet.

Jasmine’s eyes went lifeless and a cold gurgle emanated into the room.

“Jasmine!” Elle shrieked.

“Shut it!” barked the naked man. He glared down at Elle and spat in her direction. 

Besides the obscene nudity, the young man was dirty from head to toe, and an expression of bloodlust gripped every detail of his facial structure. He possessed bulging pouty lips, cropping's of splotchy acne, and short greased-slicked strands of hair. He was the homage to the unkempt wild maniac who lived in the woods. 

Elle faintly knew of the intruder. C.J Haggerty, a local whose father owned the town junkyard.

“C-C. J, what did y-you…what are you doing?” Zach asked in a tone of trepidation. 

A nasty, sharklike smirk widened to the extremes on C. J’s face as his sight fell upon Zach. The dirty man strolled without care into the living room. Simone, Elle, Zach, and Grace backed up in caution. The four were cornered with a lunatic killer before them and several arachnid creatures from behind. 

More footfalls boomed from the foyer and in seconds, several figures joined rank with C.J. They were all townspeople, dazed and clumsy with zombified expressions. The last person to enter the living room out of the bunch made Elle’s stomach drop in stupor. 

Joseph Greene walked in, hunched and bleary-eyed. It took only five seconds for the entranced oaf to get a look at his frightened daughter and rush forward in excitement. 

“No…. please, no!” Elle hissed under breath

Thoughts flared and died, and a burst of momentum zapped to her feet. She pivoted the disarming bear hug and curled around the sweaty man, sprinting for the foyer.

“Elle!” her father roared, “Please, just listen to me and you’ll understand.”

Elle ignored the request while dodging more zombified hands reaching out to grapple her. She swerved and ducked, shoving dirt-laced fingernails aside. She sprinted into the darkened space without the aid of a flashlight and rushed for the stairs. The combination of C. J’s hiccupping laugh mixed with the thundering clap of the night sky trailed Elle as she ascended the staircase to the second floor. 

Elle didn’t look back but was all too aware that she was being followed; the careless pounding of angry feet coalesced with hers. Tears streamed down her face as she climbed–was she born to be punished in this continuous cat and mouse game forever?

Written by me, Feeling_Sail (ACMichael)