Scuttlebug
The first thing to know about me is this: I fucking hate spiders. Small ones, I can deal with. I even find them quite cute on occasion. It’s when I can see the details of a spider that it becomes an issue for me. Those black, soulless countless eyes staring at you – their intentions hidden veiled behind vacant pits; those twitching, hairy talons microscopically purring at the sight of you; those long, spindly legs that cover all possible ground and move with terrifying fluidity. Even writing this down and imagining the sight of them makes my skin crawl as phantom legs crawl slowly up my back. Do you know how they kill their pray? They encase them, physically trap them within webbing and suck all the fluid from their bodies; leaving behind only a desiccated husk drained of all moisture. I would hate to be a fly on the wall for that.
My fear of spiders began when I was five years old – I can remember it so vividly because, well, it was the first time I can remember being genuinely afraid. Obviously, stuff scared me when I was a kid (I firmly believe that I shouldn’t have been watching Doctor Who at three years old) but pure, unfiltered dread was something I had never experienced before then. I’d been in the bath, and I’d let the water out, leaving me just lying in the tub playing with a rubber duck – flying it around in the air, pretending it was a UFO as it started its maiden voyage through space and the white cracking paint on the ceiling above were the constellations between black abysses. I must have been just lying there, imagining the stars and planets when I finally looked down. There it was. It must have crawled out of the drain while I wasn’t looking. It was big, especially to my youthful eyes, around the size of a clenched fist; I could see it’s body slowly moving up and down as it breathed, those hairy appendages creasing as it fell and rose. It was just staring at me. I could see eight eyes, those glistening hollow voids threatening to swallow me whole. I was too scared to move, my body trapping itself even as I tried to fight my way out. For the longest time (for I do not know how long I stayed there), we just stared at one another, our eyes trapped in a constant gaze – my paralysed body shuddering with fear, my eyes wide open in terror and its fat, bulbous form stiff in its persistent watch. We were at a standoff, unsure who would move first: either me with fear or it with hunger. They say that spiders are more scared of us then we are of them. This one wasn’t. I’m sure of it. It seemed like it enjoyed watching me quiver in dread, its wait for action merely a way to savour the hunt.
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With a start, those ungodly appendages began to hasten towards me, all eight limbs working in tandem towards my cowering form. The Spider’s eyes never moving from my own. Its teeth seemed to shake with pure excitement as it barrelled forward. My body released itself from its immobility with a scream as I leapt out of the porcelain tub that I was sure to become my grave. I crashed hard against the black and white checker-marked tiles and I wailed in fear and agony and pain and terror. Mum was tearing through the bathroom doors in seconds; her face riddled with that look of pure distress that only maternity can bring out.
“Sweetie, what happened?” she asked me, picking my shivering body up from the cold floor.
“There-there was a-a-a spider! And it was going to eat me! It had big eyes and it was watching me in the bath and it wanted to eat me and kill me!” I cried into her arms as she held me to her. Her hugs could solve any problem, a shield against the evils in the world.
“Are you sure?” she asked, slowly relenting her grip from me.
“Yeah! It was like big and hairy and had scary eyes.”
“I believe you, honey. I’m just going to see if I can get rid of it, okay?”
She began to walk towards the bathtub with, in retrospect, an air of trepidation. I think she was scared of spiders too. As she got closer to the bath, I could feel my body shake again – images of my mother leaning over the tub just for a blur of legs to leap up towards her face as she screamed, its body locking itself over her visage as its talons began suckling at her, draining her slowly and painfully.
“Mum! Wait! Be careful!” I screamed at her as she leaned over to look inside the bath. In what felt like an eternity, she looked up and down for something; the tension making the shaking in my body worsen tenfold. In one slow, creeping movement, she looked up and then towards me.
“There’s nothing there, sweetie,” Mum smiled, embracing me again, “are you sure you weren’t imagining it? We know how much you love to daydream.”
“I wasn’t!” I hissed in protest; the idea Mum wouldn’t believe me broke my heart a little.
“Okay, okay! I believe you. Now, let’s get you dried up and ready for bed. You’ve got an early start tomorrow.” With protest like all children naturally feel the need to exhibit, I got ready for bed – all the while, my eyes would return to the bath where the Spider was. I waited with bated breath for it to slowly crawl out, those thin arms creeping their way over the rim followed by that nasty, cold face. Nothing crawled out of the tub and Mum escorted me out of the bathroom.
“There won’t be any more spiders tonight, poppet. They won’t come after you anymore.” Mum whispered to me later as I drifted off to sleep. I smiled at this, she always knew how to make me feel safe. It was then that I felt something weird. It was tingly, like having a feather trailed over your body. It felt like something was crawling up my leg, something with eight little legs and eight little eyes. I didn’t sleep very well that night.
By the time I turned 19, spiders rarely entered any thoughts. Sure, if I saw one or if some smart arse decided to show me a close-up image of one, I would run for the hills but other than that, I wouldn’t think of them. The Bathtub Spider story became an anecdote to tell my partners why they had to get the spider out of the bedroom and I couldn’t. Living with arachnophobia is pretty easy: just avoid cobwebs and old buildings and you’re sorted. That’s when the dreams started. At that time, I was suffering from chronic anxiety and as a result, I had begun having nightmares. In the vast majority of cases, I would just simply wake up from them hyperventilating with no memory of why I was so scared. The only nightmare I could remember was the one with the spiders.
It was always the same dream, same in every single detail. I would be stuck in one spot, a single viewpoint, looking down a seemingly never-ending corridor. The walls were lined with cracked, salmon-red bricks – each one covered in varying degrees of moss and general grime. To my right stood two, large broken windows; the glass yellowed with age and caked in that same mixture of moss and detritus. I couldn’t see what was outside of the windows as everything, other than what was in my immediate vicinity, was engorged within a thick veil of pitch darkness. There was no noise, just the quiet ambience of my own breath. I would look down this corridor and nothing else. Just waiting. Time moving on with no movement.
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Something was moving in the darkness. Scuttling within the sea of black in front of me. The sound of my breathing became louder, shallower, as I wondered what lived within this place, craving to know what was coming yet not being able to move myself from that spot. So, I would wait. Staring down that corridor again. Nothing for company except the memory of movement in the shadows. Silence.
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Movement once more. Closer this time. Fear surged through my body, primal emotion taking over my thoughts – I needed to run, to escape, to flee, I just needed to get away from whatever that thing in the darkness was. I couldn’t move. I was stuck. Warm beads of sweats began to trickle down my frozen features. The dread filling my chest was becoming unbearable, my thoughts decaying into gibberish and vagaries – knowing that something was coming towards me and I couldn’t even do anything, couldn’t even run, was a hell unto itself.
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Silence. Whatever it was, it had stopped. I began to weep as I couldn’t take them away from their constant search for the unknown in-front of me. No more movement for minutes. My breath was ragged and razor thin, panic taking over any cognitive ability I had left. I waited with shuddering breath for something, anything to happen; even just to stop the terror within me.
It was a blur of motion, a sudden unnaturally fast mass of fur and legs and reflective eyes leapt towards me with an ungodly screech filled with unbridled joy. Whatever it was, it was loving every single moment of my horror, and it was so, so hungry. Before my brain even had time to process what was happening, the thing in the darkness was mere inches away from me – its horrifying face barrelling towards me. I still couldn’t move, my body paralytic and so I did the only thing I could do. I began to scream.
I would awake with a start, my body tearing itself forward as if to literally drag me away from my sleep, my breath as shallow and vapid as it was in the dream. My heart would run rapid in my chest and my lungs desperately driving me to bring oxygen to it. It would take me a while to calm myself down, finally realising that I was back in my (now sweat-soaked) bed. This dream would happen once a week, every week for around 4 months; the dream was always the same. That same terror. And then just as quick as it began, it stopped. The Spider in my dreams was gone, and I could stop thinking about the arachnid species once again.
Two nights ago, I had a new dream. It took me a while to get to sleep, the prospect of entering any semblance of slumber being fought from me, like my brain was trying to stop me from going somewhere, like it knew what hid behind the veil of dreams. After two hours of this, my body finally relented, resigned to let me face whatever was waiting for me on the other side…
I was in an old factory; rusted machinery lined uniformly across the workhouse to which I found myself. Cobwebs filled each crevice and cavity of the ancient machinery, its mechanisms and their intricate responsibilities in the work line wasted away with the entropy of time. No one had been here for a very, very long time. I slowly walked through the workhouse, dragging my finger along until it was entirely caked in dust. Places like this are beautiful in their own way, little microcosms of time far past, once filled with people working to provide for their families, working hard to get through each day. Now, in the future, all the marks they’ve left behind is the dust being blown from my finger.
I continued through the building, finding nothing except more empty rooms and pitch-black corridors. All lined with salmon bricks and broken windows. I felt a resounding familiarity with the design, a perverse sense of nostalgia but couldn’t place the reason for the feeling. I had gone everywhere I thought possible until I saw a staircase; a basic concrete structure purely devised to be used for function and efficiency. The way to go up was completely caved in, a broken cascade of masonry and concrete had completely closed off any access to the higher levels. The way down, however, was left open. I looked down the stairs and was met with nothing but darkness. Silent darkness. A sudden wave of apprehension washed over me like cold water on a Midsummer’s Eve, I couldn’t possibly go down there – the first rule in every situation: never go into the basement. Resigning myself to loop around the main building again, I began to turn around when I heard something. It was distant but it was definitely there. I stood still and waited. It came again. A soft, weak cough floated from the darkness. Without realising it, I’d taken a step back – there couldn’t be someone here, surely. Not in a forgotten place like this. The cough came again; more pained this time.
“If there’s someone else here, I need to find them.” I said to myself before descending the staircase down into the unknown.
People think they know pure darkness. They’ve been in a house with no lights on, walked in the forests in the dead of night or even explored underneath the earth itself. Nothing like that is true darkness. The place I had entered was intangible. All I could see in front of me was the thickest soup of black. The purity of the blackness was disorientating, my equilibrium stripped bare. I could hear my heart beating in my ears and every shallow breath sounded like gale-force winds. I reached my arms out to find anything to cling onto, my arms flailing aimlessly without finding purchase.
“HELLO?” I called out, my words echoing into the unknown space, slowly dissipating in the air. I waited but heard no reply.
“I heard you coughing! Are you okay?” No reply. I stood there, motionless in an abyss, kicking myself for even coming down here. While the factory above was a different kind of nightmare, at least I had the ability to see what I should be afraid of. Here, there was just nothing. Just a vast and empty space – as far removed from God and light of heaven.
“Is… someone there?” I spun around, almost falling over in the process. It was definitely some sign of life.
“If you can hear me, keep on talking. I’m coming to get you!” I shouted back, already making my way forwards (whichever way that was)
“NO,” the Voice cried back, “please leave me here! I’m safe here! Please don’t take me away from here!”
“Hey, hey, that’s good, just keep talking, I think I’m almost there!” The voice was coming from my right, so I slowly crept my way towards it, making sure to focus on each step as to not trip over and lose my direction.
“No, please! You don’t understand! It doesn’t know I’m down here! It can’t get me if it doesn’t know where I am, just please go!”
“Good job, just keep talking.” I was close, I was sure of it – the Voice sounded old or, at the very least, worn out. There was defeat resting within each word, like the voice was the last soldier left of his platoon, the enemy advancing closer and closer to his location as he stood among the bodies of his fallen men.
“STOP! NOW!” the Voice’s urgency halted my progress. The sound of the voice shushing me shot through the stiff air and momentarily paralysed me/ In that silence, I heard something else. It was fast, rhythmic and coming from above. We waited in the quiet air of the black space. The noise above moved past us and slowly faded away.
“What was that?” I whispered, anxiously waiting for any more movement.
“It’s looking for me! Oh god oh fuck oh fuck!” the Voice has become hysterical, their words becoming a babbling mess but luckily, I was able to find my way towards it. I kneeled down to where I thought to the voice was and reached my arm out, catching something with my hand. It felt like an arm, had the same shape as one but it was rake thin and felt brittle to the touch.
“Hey, hey, look I’m here now, okay?” I whispered, trying to sound calming but failing even to my own ears.
“Don’t you understand? There’s two of us now! It’s going to sense that and come after us! You’ve put us both in danger!” the Voice bellowed out in a mix of anger and anguish. Their body had become a shaking wreck; I was scared they were going to shake themselves apart.
“Think about it, we have a better chance together than apart. Whatever that noise was is going to find you eventually, we have a better chance of getting out together, rather than alone.” I said, more to myself than to them. This place was filling me up, a pure anguish that seemed to live in the dust floating in the dank air surrounding us. All I had was the vague hope that we could evade whatever was waiting above.
“Okay,” I continued, “we need to get out of here, get back upstairs. We can at least get our bearings. Let me help you up.” I found the Voice’s arm again and lifted his arm around my shoulder. With a great deal of luck, I was able to find the staircase once again and slowly carried my companion back up to the factory, and to the thing stalking above us.
My companion was very light so getting them up the stairs was no issue; we passed back into one of the countless corridors where I finally got a good look at them. It was a man, around 35 at a guess but you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at him; his face was sunken and gaunt, his features exacerbated by a barrage of wrinkles. His body was a disturbing sight; his stomach was almost none-existent – his shirt outlining the cavity where it should’ve been. I could even see his ribcage protruding outwards with two gaps on either side. He was missing ribs. What the hell had happened to him?
“What happened to you? What is happening? What was that noise?” I asked the Man, who looked on the verge of collapse. I found a wall and gently rested him against it.
“It… was able to get me once. It fed on me. I had nothing left in me. It tried to… to drain it all out but I-I got away, I cut my way out and I ran and ran and ran but my… body is empty.” The Man croaked out, each word seeming to take a little more from him each time.
“Drain what out?” I asked, the fear starting to rear its head once again, my nerves burning with it.
“Me. It was draining me.”
“What is it? Please tell me, please!” I pleaded, calm leaving me completely and being replaced with that old pleading horror. Behind me, I heard a clang, metal hitting the floor. I turned to look and saw a rusty spanner had hit the floor and… something moving very fast away from it. A sudden blur of movement. The Man coughed and I snapped my head back towards him. He was in a very bad way; his skin had become a sheer white and his eyes coated in a sickly purple.
“It’s not human… all it-it-it wants is… to eat. My dad used to tell me… stories of it. A… hungry beast that drained men and cocooned their bodies to-to use to birth its children. M-m-m-mr. Mr. Scuttlebug.”
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The Man let out a sudden intake of air, lurched forwards and fell back hard. I moved rapidly closer to him, trying to hear breathing or any sign of life. There was none. The Man was gone. I was alone. I stood up, turned around and stared down into the darkness.
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I stared forward, listening to that rhythmic scuttle. Creeping towards me. I looked down the corridor, shrouded in shadow with only a single pinprick of moonlight close to the brick threshold between myself and the thing ahead.
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It was moving faster now, closer.
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I could hear loud thudding slams with each step Mr. Scuttlebug took. Each mandible slamming itself onto the decaying concrete below.
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I remembered now. I’ve seen this before. I’ve heard this all before. I didn’t want to be back here. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to see what was coming for me. I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t want to die. Fuck, I’m going to die here.
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It stopped. Right before the threshold. A face came out from the darkness. Human. With eight glassy eyes filled with mania and ravenous lust. With hairy talons vibrating with ecstasy. With salivating teeth concocted into a maniacal grin. With cracking skin like leather stretched across an ill-fitting skull.
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Eight raven black spider legs slowly gripped themselves onto the brickwork, hanging right in front of me, getting ready to leap at me one again. We stared at one another for an eternity, as we had always done. Its glassy eyes drinking up the grotesque sight of my fear. It’s face never ceasing from it’s constant smile. Mr. Scuttlebug’s face moved glided towards my own, its hot breath bouncing off of my features, threatening to force my eyes shut. Mr. Scuttlebug’s mouth opened. A swarm of small, fat spiders flew from its open jaw and jumped onto my face. They crawled everywhere, the sensation of their little appendages stabbing into my skin made my eyes begin to weep. They crawled and crawled, up my nose and into my mouth. I could feel them crawl into my skull and into my brain. I could feel them crawl down my throat and circle my heart. Mr. Scuttlebug’s jaw slowly closed and it floated back to the threshold. It sat still once more. Our constant vigil once again continuing.
Suddenly, with no warning or indication, those horrid legs dropped from their purchase and slammed back onto the asphalt. It stood motionless once more.
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Mr. Scuttlebug was moving at an impossible speed, its body crawled around the walls in a sickening display of motion as it sprinted towards me, its legs twitching in synchronicity and anticipation. It’s gaze never left my own, that fucking smile burning a hole in my brain and filling it with profound terror and manic dread. Those eight hairy legs rapidly flailing towards my paralysed body. It got me. Wrapped its legs around my visage and began to squeeze. I could hear bones cracking and muscles tearing. I could feel my eyes being forced out of my body and my teeth being cracked with the pressure. Mr. Scuttlebug brushed its salivating talons across my face and then opened its mouth, ready to eat. I felt my head split open and…
I awoke with a start, my body tearing itself forward as if to literally drag me away from my sleep, my breath as shallow and vapid as it was in the dream. My heart was running rapid in my chest and my lungs desperately driving me to bring oxygen to it. It took me a while to calm myself down, finally realising that I was back in my (now sweat-soaked) bed. I started to cry.
I’ve been staying with my partner since – I told them about everything and, after a quick telling-off about not telling them sooner, they’ve let me temporarily move in. We’re hoping that sleeping in bed with someone else will help. I hope it will. I don’t want to see Mr. Scuttlebug again. I don’t even want to dream anymore. I just want to not be scared anymore.
There is something I haven’t told my partner – something I don’t want to tell them. I think it’s because I think that if I tell someone, it will become true. I hope I’ve just gone insane. Ever since I woke up from that dream, I’ve noticed cobwebs appearing. Not just normal cobwebs in forgotten corners you can never be bother to clean, I mean they are everywhere. In the shower, on my nightstand, inside the oven, on the front door and windows. I even woke up with my face covered in them last night. There’s one last thing and it’s the reason I’m writing this down, every so often – no matter what I’m doing or where I am – I’ll feel a sudden warm feeling on my face, like flush. Like someone’s breathing on it. Breathing hot warm breath. It’s always followed by the feeling, that terrible feeling, that something is crawling up my leg.