And Crawling Things Lurk

At the south edge of Cedar City, an old, faded blue van sat beneath a tree in a strip mall parking lot across the road from where Old Redwood Highway curved around a heavily wooded knoll. Inside the van, Billy’s hands worked at their task while his gaze focused on the image beyond the windshield, the upper windows of a house he could just see through the trees at the top of the small hill.

A brisk breeze rustled aside the branches overhanging the van, and harsh, winter sunlight lanced through the windshield. When it struck the polished blade sliding across the whetstone in Billy’s lap, mirrored reflections flashed around the vehicle’s interior. A young couple lugging baskets of folded clothes from the coin-op laundry to their own car farther out glanced inside as they walked past, their casual attention attracted by the kaleidoscopic of flickering light. The sight of the skinning knife and Billy’s leering grin sent them hurrying on their way across the little parking lot.

Billy’s eyes sparkled as he drew the blade across the stone, flipped the gleaming steel over, and pushed it back along the graceful curve of the blade. After each third stroke, he wiped off whatever stone and metal shavings clung to the razor-keen edge.

He glanced back at the windows, two windows high up, side-by-side, identical, probably in the same room. They looked like eyes peeking back at him.

Returning his attention to his lap, his practiced hand set the blade at the correct angle for the next edge-forward stroke across the stone as though he were shaving it.

His eyebrows pushed parallel rows of creases up his forehead as he peered back up at the house without raising his head. Must be a big house to reach the tops of the trees like that. Is she looking out one of those windows? Will she be the only one in there? Is she even at home? How old is she? Has to be old. Old women always lived in places like that.

He held his knife up before his eyes and stroked the blade with the fingers of his other hand, caressing the cold metal with just the tips of his fingers.

He caught motion in his side-view mirror and turned his head to watch Turk came out of the pool hall where he had gone to question the locals as subtly as a person his size could manage. Turning sideways to squeeze between parked cars, Billy’s partner lumbered towards the van. With a handlebar mustache drooped to the first roll of his triple chins, his huge chest seemed diminished by the girth of the even greater paunch hanging out over his straining belt. But, as big as he was, the thing people noticed most about him was the stink exuding from his unwashed body and clothes. Sometimes, it even got to Billy.

Turk had to double-thumb the button to get the driver’s door open. The van listed heavily to that side as he wedged himself behind the wheel, and the hinges protested as the door swung shut again. He glanced over at Billy then peered through the windshield at the tree-covered knoll across the road behind them. “You’re friggin’ nuts – you know that? You got a regular love affair with that knife o’ yours, don’t you?”

Billy’s chuckle was low in his throat. “Beautiful, though, ain’t she? Didja ever see a blade so beautiful?”

Turk half-turned to watch Billy study the knife’s edge. “A real wacko,” he mumbled.

Billy was small, and not just in comparison to his companion. He was short – only five feet seven inches—and thin. His limbs seemed to be barely more than bones wrapped in skin. But the stringy muscles hidden there fueled by a fiendish desire to cause pain gave him a strength that had surprised many an adversary. His gaunt face stretching over an angular skull seemed to just barely cover it. Those few persons who knew Billy swore his ghoulish, vulture-like countenance reflected his true nature. He sort of liked the image, but even more, he liked to think of himself as cold and hard as the honed, curved blade in his hand.

He slid the knife into an engraved leather sheath on his belt with great care lest he nick the leather. Then, with his gaze locked back on the house, he wiped the mucus that was beginning to run from his nose with the back of his hand. “So?” he asked. “What’dja find out?”

Besides the windows that had fired Billy’s imagination, a chimney and a portion of the slate roof were also visible between two eucalyptus trees that towered over the rest of the hill’s runaway growth. The rest of the house remained hidden from view among the less tall trees like an Easter egg in tall grass.

“Some said the place has probably been abandoned for at least fifty years, maybe a hundred. One or two said there might be an old woman in there, but no one’s ever seen her. The Vasov family could still own it, but no one knows where they are.”

“But no one said she ain’t up there, right? Only that she ain’t been seen. So, what we heard down south could still be true.”

Turk shrugged and went on. “They all stay away from the place. Once in awhile, some barstool cowboy gets tanked up and goes up there on a dare, but not many even get close, and no one ever tries to go in. Even the kids stay away from it. They said walking around in the trees is enough to sober ’um up enough to give up. Especially spooky, after dark, I guess.”

Billy sneered. “And I guess the bad asses in this town ain’t as bad as they think they are.”

“They said if she really is up there, she might even be the last of the Vasovs.”

“And, if she is,” Billy wiped drool from the corner of his mouth, “she’s up there sitting on all the gold and jewels they collected over the years. Vasov—what kind of weirdo name is that? Families like that always have gold and jewels.”

Billy didn’t concern himself with issues such as why the Vasovs wouldn’t have put their fortune in banks or investments. After all, if one part of the myth was true, it just stood to reason that the others probably were, too.

Turk went on. “Maybe a couple of times a year a van from out of town goes up there. No one knows what it brings or takes away, if anything. It could just be the owner checking up on the place. It just slips in and out after dark, so hardly nobody ever sees it. Nobody’s noticed it for several months, now, but that probably don’t mean anything. It ain’t like anyone sits around waiting for it to show up. Hell, it could even be up there right now.”

So, it was a pretty sure bet that no one was going to come barging in on them, with the possible exception of the guy in the van, and there was little likelihood that he would pose much of a threat.

“This’ll be easy pickings. Come on,” Billy hissed. “Let’s do it.”

As they casually got out of the van and sauntered away from it, Billy’s hands tucked in his jacket pockets ensured that the flap would cover the sheathed knife at his waist. Their plan was to leave the van there in the parking lot and walk up to the house. Turk assured him that it wasn’t all that unusual for cars to be left there, even overnight. And there was always a chance that it would be spotted or remembered if they parked closer. If they had to abandon the van and make their departure from the area by alternate means…well, no great loss. As they were hitch-hiking north from Los Angeles just a week before, an aging hippy still pursuing his alternate lifestyle in Big Sur had been kind enough to stop and offer them a ride and bargain prices on an assortment of pills, mushrooms and grass. After cutting his throat and dumping his body down a canyon, they helped themselves to his wares as well as his van. So even if the cops did spot their parked van, there was no way it could be connected to them. No one would ever know they were up there.

They paused at the edge of the parking lot and waited for a couple of cars and a milk tanker to go by. Then, with no more traffic coming, they crossed the highway and scrambled up the steep bank on the other side. Within seconds, they were out of sight in the thick brush that grew down close to the road.

Beyond that first wall of green where swirling air from passing traffic brushed most of the water from the foliage, the flora was a wild jumble of lush verdant growth among dead and dying trees and underbrush dripping from the earlier rain and competing for dappled sunlight. Birches clothed in squares of white bark stood about in groups of three, all but unrecognizable in thick overcoats of clinging ivy. Maples and alders struggled for space amid patches of wildly growing blackberry brambles. Shreds of Spanish moss like gauzy shrouds clothed twisted and gnarled limbs of valley oaks. Towering eucalyptus trees with their tatters and streamers of pealing bark stretched into the afternoon sky accompanied by cedars, firs and redwoods. A deep covering of rotting leaves and moldering grasses and weeds blanketed the ground between clumps of vine-tangled trees. Rather than leaving the air washed clean, the morning’s drenching that stirred up the forest debris merely rendered the air tasting of things best not considered.

Turk led the way through the maze of unrestrained growth until he walked face-on into a clinging, sticky spider-web stretched five feet across the space between a failing dogwood and a spiky pyracantha. Grinning and shaking his head, Billy watched the big man teeter on the edge of panic as he wildly waved his arms and took repeated, slapping swipes at his face where the sticky strands clung.

Then Turk spotted the spider climbing the mass of tangled strands hanging from the pyracantha. It was almost three inches across its outstretched legs. “Jesus! Look at that,” he wheezed, horror giving his words a tenor’s vibrato. “Oh, Christ, I hate spiders!”

He picked up a nearby, fallen limb and smashed the creature to a pulp.

“Come on, hero,” Billy said with a giggle. “You just follow me. I won’t let no big, bad spiders get’cha.”

In a few steep paces they came across a short straightaway of the narrow, pot-holed driveway that began its circuitous climb from the highway just to the left of where the two had left the highway.

“All right,” Turk said between gasps to regain his breath. “This’ll take us right up to the front door.”

“Yeah, you go right ahead. Then, when you get shot-gunned, I’ll slip in the back way and jump her.”

“But we could take it part way, couldn’t we? I ain’t no damned mountain goat. There ain’t no trail through this stuff, and I’ve already lost half a pound of hide.”

“Not to mention all the spider webs, huh?”

“So, I don’t like spiders. Big deal.”

“Look, man,” Billy argued. “It ain’t that much further. This ain’t a big hill. And, look,” he said as he pointed left down the driveway to where it came off the highway. “Anyone down there could see clear up past here. If anyone spotted us on the driveway, either the old broad up there or someone passing down below, it could mean real trouble. You said no one comes up here, right? So if someone sees us it would be unusual enough for them to take notice, right? Send the cops before we’re gone, right? Huh?”

“Yeah, I ’spose so. But, God, just keep an eye out for spiders, will ya?”

Billy led Turk out into the narrow strip of sunlight that bathed the driveway. To the left, toward the highway, the sun hung in the sky between the solid walls of foliage on either side, and the driveway was like a bright canyon cut across the shaded hillside. To the right, the driveway continued up the incline and curved left to disappear behind clumps of head-high brush beneath shaggy crowns of trees. On the uphill side of the brush-clogged shoulder of the driveway, Billy found a path of least resistance and pushed his way through the foliage and back into the murky world of moldy, dripping undergrowth.

With wet but brittle twigs snagging at them in their passage, the twosome made their way upward. Billy clawed his way up a steep rise between the twisted and gnarled boles of two ancient pepper trees. When Turk tried to follow, though, his weight buried his feet deep into the soggy, leaf-mold covered loam, and he kept sliding back. Finally, he had to admit there was no way he could follow in Billy’s diminutive footsteps. Cursing and wheezing, too out of breath to speak audible words, he motioned to Billy that he would try to find an easier way up to the right of the trees then leaned over with his hands on his knees to suck in precious air. Billy nodded and moved in that direction on the uphill side.

“Goddamned mountain!” he finally managed. “What the hell does he think I am, a friggin’ mountain goat? Fine for him – got nothin’ to haul around but that damned knife o’ his.”

Billy grinned at the mumbled words that Turk probably thought was under his breath. From his uphill vantage, he watched his large cohort’s trial of passage through the shadowy world.

Turk’s foot slipped sideways into a slight dip as he made his way around the lower side of the huge tree, and he had to do some fancy shifting of his considerable weight to avoid tumbling back down the steep slope. One big limb had grown out horizontally on that side and blocked what would have otherwise been an easy pathway. He was forced to crouch, duck, and half-crawl beneath the massive limb and its lesser growth. But, when he finally struggled to his feet on the other side and gazed uphill, he looked to Billy like he wanted to sit down and cry.

The ground rose in a gentle slope between the pepper trees and a mass of wildly growing berry bushes. Billy stood waiting and grinning a mere fifteen feet away. Spanning the space between was a huge web.

“Oh, my God,” Turk breathed, fighting to contain welling tears of revulsion. “Billy, do something with...please, man!”

Snickering, Billy casually stepped down the slope until he was within easy arm’s reach of the thing. He glanced around, spotted a dead branch on the ground and picked it up. But before he ripped through the delicate netting, he spotted its maker poised motionless near the edge. Fascinated, he lowered the stick and leaned closer.

“Billy! What the hell you doin? Tear it down!”

“No, man. Come ’ere. Look at this sucker; he’s a real monster. See, he’s damned near as big as my hand.”

Turk watched in horror as Billy held his hand out to within inches of the huge arachnid, spreading his fingers to simulate the spider’s legs.

The spider moved the tip of one leg, easing it back from the radial strand. Its multiple eyes—groups of black dots set upon the top of its head—stared blankly at Billy’s hand.

“Jesus Christ, man! Will you kill it? Just kill it and stop screwin’ around!”

“You’d like to sink your fangs into me, wouldn’t you?” Billy said to the motionless creature, slowly withdrawing his hand.

With the immediate threat of the hand gone, the spider settled back to monitoring its trap, patiently waiting for the unwary.

Billy glanced about him then leaned over to better see the details of the obscure objects littering the ground beneath the web. With the tip of his knife, he prodded and poked at the tiny bits and pieces among the forest litter. Each one resembled the soft and fuzzy catkins of a pussy willow and they ranged in size from half an inch long to more than two inches. Closer scrutiny revealed they were the dried husks of previous meals wrapped in cocoons of imprisoning silk.

Billy impaled the largest on his knife tip and held it up for closer examination. “Oh, man, look at this,” he whispered coarsely. “Look, man! This big mother got himself a mouse! Takes a big spider to eat a mouse.”

“Are you nuts? Put that down and –”

“But, look! Man, this thing is drained like Count Dracula, himself, got it. Dry as a cup o’ dust. I read in National Geographic about how they do it. After paralyzing ’em with a bite, spiders pump ’em full of stuff like stomach acid and stuff that dissolves ’em from the inside.”

“Oh, shit!”

“Yeah, man,” Billy went on. “They digest ’em before they eat em. After it gets ’em all turned nice and juicy inside their own skin, the old spider sticks something into ’em like a straw and sucks ’em dry, like slurping a can of pop.”

“Kill it, will you!”

Billy snickered as he flicked the dried, mouse corpse into the center of the web. The spider, receiving the vibration signal of a possible new prey, raced out to investigate. But, when it discovered what had caused the disturbance, it disentangled the mouse and dropped it to the ground.

“Lookit! Come ’ere, man! Lookit it!” Billy urged his friend. “Lookit how it pushes me away.” Billy chuckled again. He pressed the tip of his knife against the spider’s mouth parts. “Taste this, sucker!” he whispered.

The jointed front legs pushed the knife away each time Billy got too close. At the same time, the other legs slowly moved the animal backwards.

“Ah, you don’t like my pretty steel, huh?”

“Billy!”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Billy mumbled. “Bye-bye, Ugly.”

He raised the knife above the spider and, with a snap of his wrist, sliced three of the creature’s legs off. The blow knocked it loose from the web, and it landed in the dust, convulsing into a ball within inches of Billy’s feet. He squatted and hovered the knifepoint above the mutilated animal then slowly shoved the tip and the widening blade through its body.

“Hear it scream?” Billy’s grin broadened when he glanced up at Turk’s blanched face. “Hear it?”

“I don’t hear shit, man.”

“That’s ‘cause you ain’t listenin’. I hear it.”

After Billy plunged the knife blade into the soft dirt several times to clean the steel, he wiped it on his pant leg and re-sheathed it. He picked up the dead branch he had dropped earlier and casually destroyed the meticulously created web and motioned for Turk to join him.

Just a dozen feet farther up the hill they encountered another web stretched between two trees. But, this time, before Billy could play his games with the creature, Turk gathered his courage, picked up a dead limb the size of a car axle, and smashed the web, the spider, and a good portion of a nearby, overgrown rose bush.

“You’re brutal.” Billy smirked.

“Shut up! Just shut up and get us out of these damned woods! And, when we leave, we’re stayin’ on the driveway. You hear me?”

They managed to spot and bypass three other webs in their course, one harboring a spider that was even bigger than the one by the pepper tree. They paused to catch their breaths and looked about them. It took a lot of teasing and cajoling for Billy to stop Turk from abandoning the entire mission and fleeing back down the hill. It was only when he insisted he was going on to the house at the top with or without Turk that the big man relented; he wasn’t about to try to make his way back down on his own.

Eventually the ground leveled off, and Billy led Turk out into a clearer space on the west side of the house, and then they crept through and around thickets growing right up to the walls. Eyeing the shuttered windows of the first floor, whose sills were still a foot above Turk’s head, they crept silently to their left towards the corner of a roofed porch. Their repeated glances up at the grime-encrusted glass of the second and third floor windows for any sign that they had been discovered couldn’t penetrate beyond the lace curtains.

Peeking around the corner, Billy looked out onto a relatively clear space that had probably been a well-tended front yard at one time but was now nothing but an almost sunlit, weedy meadow where the driveway coming from around the east and south sides of the house ended near the front steps of the huge house. Twin strips of bare dirt with high grass and weeds in the center curved away to the right, past a collapsing carriage house and out of sight around the far corner of the mansion. Through the thinner undergrowth and trees on the east side of the knoll, he could see down to another structure, dilapidated and not likely inhabited several hundred yards away on the near bank of what appeared to be a small river. No van was anywhere in sight. Warped wooden steps led up to a broad, roofed porch that extended across the entire front of the house and part way around the east side overlooking the river. Centered between more shuttered windows, a heavy, ornately carved door beckoned.

The steps creaked beneath Turk’s weight, and Billy was certain they must have been heard. But, if the old woman had heard them, she wasn’t letting on. They stepped to the door and stood listening for a moment.

“Just remember,” Turk whispered. “I’m first, this time.”

Billy nodded and seized the old-fashioned, glass doorknob and twisted it, but the door wouldn’t open. The only sign of a lock was an old-fashioned keyhole beneath the knob for a skeleton-type key. He moved back a step and glanced around, then nodded to Turk.

The big man stepped up and gripped the knob. He took a deep breath as he set his body for a quick, shattering blow with his shoulder against the door. But, before he could launch his assault, there came the clicking sounds of lock tumblers moving. They exchanged looks, anticipation stretching grins onto their faces.

Turk let go of the knob as it began to turn in his hand and moved back a step.

Slowly the door crept open, and, from the shadows beyond the doorway, a small, very old woman wearing over-large, dark glasses smiled at them.