Wow, so was I ever wrong about the spiders.
The good news is that the flies have probably not been eating the spiders.
The bad news is . . . so inexpressibly horrifying that I don’t know if I can even write it down.
Of course, Logan—my baby brother/science mentor—isn’t bothered at all by it. He called me into his room after school today as I was walking past on my way downstairs. I hadn’t been in there in ages. Thanks to that horrible buzzing noise, I’ve just been avoiding it since the night of his seizure. But he called to me, so, holding my breath, I opened the door and went in.
Instantly I had to press a palm to my forehead to calm the cacophony inside. “Jeez, Logan, how can you stand to sleep in here?”
But he just gave me a quizzical look, like he had no clue what I was talking about. Apparently he had dropped a comic book or something behind his dresser, and he needed help shifting it so he could get back there.
I got on the other side and we both gave a mighty heave, moving the old oak dresser about a foot away from the wall. Logan grabbed his comic book and we were about to shove the thing back into place when I stopped him.
“Look at that,” I said. “The floor under the dresser is darker than the rest of the wood. It’s totally discolored.”
“So?” said Logan, the correct care and maintenance of hardwood floors not being a major area of interest for him, I guess.
“It’s weird,” I said. “We just brought this dresser from California, right? It’s not like it’s been sitting here 100 years. I wonder if the varnish from the dresser has been seeping off or something.”
It didn’t sound like a very convincing explanation, even to me, but I couldn’t think of a better one. Shaking my head a little to stave off that annoying buzzing sound, I bent down to press my fingers to the darkened wood. I wanted to see if it felt sticky or wet at all, but about half an inch from contact, I froze.
Because the dark spot on the floor was moving. The whole patch, just . . . writhing and undulating. Holding my breath, I leaned down to look closer, and the whole thing is like a mass of teeny tiny little spiders crawling all over each other until they look like one solid organism.
And when I say tiny, I mean it. Each one was about the size of a pinhead, maybe slightly bigger. From a distance you couldn’t really see them at all. But up close . . . Christ, I can still see that seething mass whenever I close my eyes. My vision got all gray at the edges, and all I could think was that those tiny spiders could be anywhere, could be under me, could be crawling all over me. I got up and ran down the stairs and outside, and I didn’t stop until I reached a coffee shop downtown.
It’s getting late now, and I really better go home. But I don’t know how I’m going to set foot back in that house unless I somehow block what I’ve seen from my mind forever.