Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:52 a.m.
Mel, Trina, Jeremy, Kyle, and Anthony move swiftly down the hall, their footsteps echoing. The scuttling and the singing follow them. The hallways are a tangle; they make little sense. They approach a T-intersection.
TRINA: It’s getting closer.
MEL: Then hurry!
Her voice is too loud in the quiet hall. The humming sound swells, and the camera spins around as Mel whirls to face the thing that’s following them.
It could almost be called a spider. Thick black legs spike around the corner, spanning the hallway, with their hooked ends gouging holes in the wall to either side. It glistens, even in the shadows. Then comes the head: almost human, but eyeless, desiccated flesh pulled tight over the contours of a skull. Its lips pull back from black, jagged teeth, and a long, papery tongue, pointed at the end, slithers between them, tasting the air.
Its shoulders emerge next—withered skin, protruding bones. No arms, only nubs, puckered flesh at their ends. A thin chest and then a rib cage, exposed, blackened. But more disturbing than that, something is inside the ribs. Barely visible as more than the faintest silhouette—and fingers, threading through the ribs, like hands about to part curtains and peer through. It is from behind the ribs that the piping, singing sound comes.
Where the humanoid torso’s legs should be, it connects clumsily to an arachnid’s body. It approaches steadily as its tongue lashes the air.
GRACE: Hey. This way.*
The voice is a whisper. Mel sucks in a startled breath as a white woman peers out from one of the sides of the hallway intersection ahead, beckoning. She wears a T-shirt with a cartoon fox and a grungy gray sweatshirt. Her hair is buzzed short at the temples and longer on top, sections of it dyed blue. Midthirties, perhaps, though weariness ages her.
GRACE: Come here. And whatever you do, don’t run.
The teens glance at each other, and then at the creature. It’s nearly on them. They dart down the spur of hallway the woman occupies, and she waves them into stillness and silence as the spider advances.
It moves on, past them. It doesn’t seem to realize that they’re there, and soon it vanishes down the hall in the distance.
TRINA: What was that?
GRACE: Keep your voice down. Something’s always listening, and everything’s always hungry. There’s worse things than the spider in here.
MEL: Uh, sorry—who are you?
GRACE: I’m Grace. Winters. And don’t worry. I’m going to get you out of here.