House of Spiders

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WARNING! THIS IS A WORK OF EROTIC HORROR FICTION AND CONTAINS ADULT ORIENTED MATERIAL OF A SEXUAL NATURE. The copyright of this story remains with the author, Night Owl. This posting does not give you the rights to post this on any website without obtaining the author's permission first.
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House of Spiders
by Night Owl

(Story Content: F, Erotic Horror, Nudity)

Deborah Hahn had always been afraid of spiders. Deathly afraid. Not a soul could convince her that most arachnids were harmless, because she knew better. She had always known, ever since she was six when she woke up from her nap to find a black widow crawling over her bare leg. She screamed when it bit her and she became so ill that her parents had to rush her to the hospital. Since then, the mere sight of a spider, any spider, terrified her.

Now, fourteen years later, when she saw a spider crawling across the carpet, she reacted in the usual way – heart beating like a rabbit, a clamminess in her hands, followed by the sweat breaking out on her forehead, all in the span of a minute. Keeping her eyes on it, she reached over for her slipper and slowly got up off the couch. Her hand was shaking terribly. The brown spider was only about the size of a nickel, legs, and all, though in Deborah’s mind, it may as well have been the size of an elephant. She was that terrified.

Holding her breath, she lunged forward and smacked it with the heel of her slipper, but nothing happened. Oddly, the spider had a tough, rubbery outer skin that didn’t even seem to be real with little coarse hairs sprouting from its body. The blow stunned it at first, then it started to dart for a floor vent nearby. She quickly smacked again, and again. She was no longer afraid of it but loathed it and wanted to crush the beast out of its miserable existence. The fifth blow finally killed it.

“Gotcha you little bastard,” she breathed a sigh of relief, then struck it one more time for good measure.

She carefully wadded it up with a paper towel and, holding it as far away her as she could, went into the kitchen to toss it in a wastebasket. Her nerves were just beginning to settle down, her pulse rate returning to normal, when she turned around and saw another spider, just like the one she had just killed, scuttling across the sink counter!


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Deborah was hardly a timid soul prone to such irrational behavior. She was intelligent and fearlessly independent to a point of appearing snobbish to people who really didn’t know her. At 5’ 9”, she had a slender, willowy figure, long wavy blonde hair and large, striking blue eyes. She could have been a model, and she even tried it for a year after graduating from high school, only to find the whole business ‘too superficial’. So instead, she enrolled at a small community college in northeast Denver to study mental health therapy while working part time as a restaurant hostess in the evenings. Her parents wanted her to stay at home, but at age 20, Deborah needed her independence, so she found a small house to rent near school.

The place was a modest, one-bedroom/bathroom model built in the 1950’s with a large basement for storage. It sat on a plot of land a little bigger than the rest of the homes in her neighborhood, and large, ancient ash trees surrounded it on three sides to offer her some privacy. The place was a bargain, and the owner offered to reduce the rent an additional $50 a month if she would let him keep some boxes and old furniture in the basement. Deborah quickly agreed. She really didn’t need to use the basement anyway.

The first two months were extremely busy. Deborah spent most of her days and early evenings either at work or school. She was rarely allowed more than six hours of sleep, but she got used to it. Then she began to notice something strange about the house. It first began with the scuffling noises inside the walls, late at night and soft enough so that Deborah thought she must have been dreaming. On the fourth night she definitely heard it -- something skittering, scampering behind the walls of her room. It sounded like a squirrel, or worse, maybe a rat, but before she had a chance to call Mr. Ryerson, her new landlord, the noises stopped abruptly.

Not long after, she began to see spider webs springing up everywhere. She found them in corners, under the sinks, even a few strands stretching across the doorways. One day, she got a face full of the lovely, invisible strands while getting out of her car in the garage. That one nearly threw her into a fit! So far, she had never actually seen a spider until the evening she encountered the two in the living room and kitchen. That was when Deborah finally had enough.


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The next morning between classes she called Mr. Ryerson, only to find out from his wife that he had gone on a fishing trip in Montana and would not be back for another week.

“I’ll certainly let him know when he returns then I’m sure he’ll get right on it.”

“I can’t wait that long,” Deborah insisted. “I’ll just find an exterminator myself and have him send you the bill.”

“I don’t think the rental agreement states that you can . . .”

“Look, I just want these spiders gotten rid of. After I get the place sprayed, we’ll discuss the bill,” she then hung up.

After the call, Deborah felt bad about treating the woman so rudely, but the thought of spending another night in that house with those things crawling around literally gave her the shakes. She went to a phone book and fumbled through the pages to find an exterminator. She chose the most prominent ad, THRIFTY PEST CONTROL, then dialed the number and quickly explained her problem.

“Sounds like a common house spider from what you described,” the man said on the other end. “They’re pretty harmless, though, certainly not venomous. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

“It wasn’t a house spider,” she argued. “I know what they look like, and this one had a covering around its body.”

“A covering?” There was pause on the other end. “You mean . . . like an exoskeleton?”

“Yes, something like that . . . only rubbery . . . or . . . I don’t know, but I had to beat the damn thing four or five times with my slipper to kill it.”

“Well, maybe you didn’t hit it hard enough. You see, typically, a spider’s body is soft. They don’t have an exoskeleton like other insects. In fact, they’re really not classed as insects at all, but arachnids, because they have eight legs, eight eyes, and only two parts to their bodies, not three.

“Look . . . I really don’t need a science lesson right now,” she was starting to get impatient again. “What I need is for you to come and spray my house.”

“You want me to send someone over for one spider?”

“Two. I saw TWO last night, which means there are probably more.”

“Ma’am, spiders don’t infest homes like cockroaches and termites. Generally, you might see four or five, and that’s it. Besides, they’re actually good for your home because they control all the other pests . . .”

“You have poison to kill them, don’t you?”

“Yes . . . of course.”

“Good, then I want to hire you to come and spray my house . . . even if you only find one lousy spider.”

“All right,” he sighed. “The soonest I can get someone out to you is Friday.”

“That’s three days!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’re pretty busy this time of year.”

“But THREE days?”

“Look, we have other customers with REAL problems, including two cases of termite infestations and a hornet’s nest that needs to be removed. I can’t drop everything just to race over to your house and kill a spider.”

Deborah hung up the phone, fuming.


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When she came home from work, she decided to inspect the house herself. Grabbing a flashlight, she checked every room thoroughly and found nothing. No spiders, no webs either. That left only the basement. Deborah opened the door and turned on the light switch. She was about to descend the narrow stairway when she froze. At the bottom of the steps, stretched across one upper corner of the doorway, there was a large web.

Just the sight of it made her heart race again and sweat began to bead up on her forehead just like the night before. She pointed her flashlight at the web. There was no spider there, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t skulking somewhere close-by, waiting to leap onto her shoulder, or in her hair when she passed under it. Deborah moved the flashlight past the web into the basement itself. The beam could only reach about six feet past the stairs. Beyond that, she saw only blackness. There was another switch at the bottom of the steps, but she couldn’t force herself to move forward.

They were there. She knew it. Hundreds of them. She thought she heard something scurry across the floor. The sound was faint and far off, so she couldn’t tell for sure if it was real, or just the fear feeding into her imagination.

“I can hear you down there,” she heard herself whisper.

The noise came again, as if it were answering her. Taunting her to come down. She read once that the largest species of spider reported was the Goliath Birdeater, measuring 12 inches in diameter. It was only native to South America, but that fact was of little consolation in her current state.

She felt a knot growing and twisting in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t even taken a step down, yet her body was trembling all over, and she could feel her heated skin percolating underneath her clothing -- so much that sweat from under her arms and back began soaking into the white blouse she wore.

“This is crazy,” she thought to herself. “You’ve studied these types of phobias, written essays on them, so get over it! Just take a step down. The first one is always the toughest. Then when you reach the bottom of the stairs, turn on the light, and all you will find is an empty basement, and maybe a few cobwebs that have been hanging down there for years.”

But when Deborah tried to move, she couldn’t. She must have stood there in the doorway for ten minutes before she finally gave up and shut the door. By then, she was almost hyperventilating, and felt like throwing up.

Deborah knew all too well that a phobia can be a terrible thing to cope with, whether it be a fear of heights, or of water, or spiders, because those afflicted cannot deny the irrationality of their apprehension, nor can they get rid of the fear no matter how hard they try to convince themselves that it’s completely baseless.

“That’s it. Tomorrow, I’m getting someone out here to spray this house! Let THEM go into the basement. Once they’re done, I’ll feel better and the anxiety will be gone.”

It took an hour before she was finally settled down enough to put on her flannel nightshirt and go to bed. Thankfully, she heard no more creepy noises behind the walls.

But that night, uneasy dreams robbed her of a sound sleep, haunting her and pressing down on her until it felt like her entire body was being crushed from their force. At some point, her eyes opened and fluttered at strands of spider webs across her face. Still fuzzy, she tried to brush away the tickling strands, and then realized she couldn’t move her arm!

Deborah was no longer in her bed, nor was she in her room. She was lying in a web spanning at least twenty feet across a narrow, deep cavern that looked like a well with no bottom to it. Feeling trapped, she tried to move the other arm and her legs, but they were also caught in the same sticky strands. She managed to blink away the webs and lift her head. Then she gasped. Gone were the nightshirt and her panties. She was naked and wrapped almost completely in spider silk. Her arms were stretched wide, her legs also, and slightly bent at the knees in on mock parody of sex. Through the sticky shroud, she could see the faint outlines of her breasts, her pointed nipples pressing outward. She saw a dark shape where her pubic hair was between her open thighs.

Deborah tried to scream, but somehow she had lost her voice. Looking up, her eyes squinted at the ceiling light spilling down on her from her own room. It was as if part of the floor had opened up and sucked her into it, bed and all. Below her, there seemed to be no bottom, only eternal blackness, and she was hovering over it, suspended on micro-thin strands of web that couldn’t possibly be strong enough to keep her from tumbling into the abyss. She turned her head and tried to focus her eyes on one hand and the thick strands covering it. With all her effort, she twisted and jerked her arm, but her strength was unable to break it free.

“Hello there,” came a familiar voice.

She looked up again and saw a man peering down into the hole from her room. He had a bug sprayer in one hand attached to a small tank hanging on his back. Deborah couldn’t quite make out his face, but she could clearly read the patch above the pocket of his khaki shirt:

THRIFTY PEST CONTROL

“Well, well, you ARE in a fix, aren’t you,” he shouted down to her.

With a muted voice, she tried to call up for help, but the man only sat there, and a terrible grin spread across his face. He was staring at her breasts and at the spot between her legs where her pubic hair showed faintly through the web.

“Wish I could help you, ma’am,” he finally rose to his feet, “but my schedule is pretty busy as it is, busy with customers that have REAL problems. So you really don’t expect me to drop everything just to climb down there and kill ONE spider, do you?”

Then he turned and laughed, a horrible sound, and even after he disappeared, Deborah could still hear it fading in the distance.

Panic finally set in, and she began to struggle with the warm, sticky strands that refused to release her, twisting, squirming her spread-eagled body as much as she could, and sending tremors throughout the web.

Suddenly, she heard something stir down below in the darkness. She knew it was the creature that had spun this trap. She didn’t move; she didn’t dare move, for fear she might alert it, but it was too late. She felt its eyes fixed on her naked and helpless form, studying her. Then the web began shake violently. The spider was climbing up to her!

Her mind wailed in absolute terror. She felt something brush against her long blonde hair as it hung down between the sticky strands. There was a touch on her shoulder, something heavy and course, like the bristles of a broom. It touched her again, right across her ass, only this time, the touch lingered, like a caress on both cheeks. She finally managed to scream as eight long legs emerged around her and closed in to embrace her . . .

Deborah awoke with start and sat up in her bed. She was shaking all over, her nightshirt drenched in sweat. Her panties were also damp, but not from her sweat!

It was a dream – more like a nightmare, and a bizarre one at that – but it seemed so real! She got up and turned on the lights. She pulled the nightshirt over her head and tossed it in the hamper. After putting on a fresh pair of underwear and pajamas, she then went into the living room and turned on the TV to get her mind off of what just happened and ended up staying there the rest of the night.

The following day, Deborah called the exterminator again, and was relieved to hear that one of his Thursday appointments had cancelled, and that he could have someone out there to spray the house first thing in the morning. That meant she only had one more night to deal with the spiders that she knew had invaded her home. She thanked the man repeatedly before finally ending the call.

Deborah said nothing about her ‘problem’ to anyone at school, and certainly nothing about the bizarre dream. One of her classmates mentioned she looked tired and distracted.

“It’s just a little insomnia,” she lied. “Nothing serious.”

As the day passed, and after the initial shock of the nightmare had long since worn off, Deborah began to review the details of the dream over and over again in her mind. Obviously, the giant spider was her phobia and being naked and molested by the spider had to do with her vulnerability and embarrassment in not being able to face her anxiety rationally. Even the web she was trapped in could have represented the stress of dealing with work and school. Then there was the erotic aspect of the dream, and Deborah even suspected she might have had an orgasm at some point. Her analytical side came up with an answer for that too. More than a year had passed since she had sex, or even gone on a date for that matter, so why not throw some pent-up sexual frustration as well?

(“Just nerves and stress,”) she thought, (“All work and no play makes Deb a dull girl … with nothing else left but to dream about spiders molesting you.”)

The idea made her cringe and laugh at the same time.

After her last class, Deborah went straight to the school library to study for an upcoming exam. She wasn’t too anxious to go home just yet, so she stayed at the library until it closed. After arriving at the house, she immediately turned all the lights on and checked every room (minus the basement). Knowing that the exterminator would be there first thing in the morning eased her anxiety a little, or perhaps she was just too tired to care.

Before going to bed, Deborah decided to treat herself to warm bath. Maybe that and some warm milk would help her sleep. Standing naked in front of the mirror, she raised her arms to run a brush through her blonde hair while admiring the way her young, tear drop-shaped breasts hung prominently off her ribs. Her eyes darted to both armpits, deep and smooth, then down past her navel to the small tuft of blonde hair between her legs. Once thin and gawky as a little girl, Deborah’s figure had filled out nicely, and in all the right places, while still retaining her slender, gazelle-like shape. That dream definitely got her juices flowing.

Laying her brush down, she went to the closet and reached for her well-worn fuzzy green robe. In doing so, her hand brushed against something smooth and silky instead. It was her white silk kimono – a present from the boy she once dated. Deborah had nearly forgotten about it. The short length fell just above her knees, and the sleeves were very wide and loose around the arms with a delicate lace trimming the cuffs and neckline. She ran her fingers over the smooth, slippery material. Feeling decadent and sexy, she laid the robe on her bed and found a pair of matching silk panties to go with it.
("What the hell. It’s been a while, so roll with it.”)

She sauntered to the bathroom next and filled the tub with hot water and vanilla scented bubble bath. Lowering herself into the warm tub, Deborah sighed as the tiny currents rippled against her body. She leaned back and closed her eyes, then raised her arms behind her head, allowing the bubbles to close in around her breasts and tease her nipples. That drew another sigh.

She then lowered her arms, elbows resting on the sides of the tub and let her hands drape over the rim. The water almost felt like it was getting warmer. Whatever stress she might have had quickly melted away until it was almost forgotten. Slowly her knees emerged from the bubbles and parted, pressing themselves against the sides of the tub. The warmth slid between her thighs and she moaned.

("I’m definitely going have to do something about this later.”)

Deborah kept her eyes closed and listened to the water slowly dripping from the tub faucet. Her consciousness started to drift, and as tired as she was, she could have easily fallen asleep in that tub if something hadn’t compelled her mind to snap alert – whether it was a sound, or just a feeling, she didn’t know – but her eyes suddenly opened. For a moment she saw nothing, until her tired eyes focused on something strange. . . and then she shrieked.

Perched right on the faucet of her tub was a large brown spider!

Deborah jerked back when she saw it, splashing water onto the floor and slamming the back of her head against the wall tiles. It looked just like the one she had killed two nights ago, only larger, almost the size of a half dollar. Its shiny black eyes, all eight of them, seemed to be looking right at her!

(“Oh my God!”)

She was so startled, so frightened that she couldn’t move. She just sat there with her back pressed against the tiles and stared at the little beast, her face transfixed with horror.

The spider crouched on the faucet.

(“It’s getting ready to jump and sink its fangs into me . . . I just know it!”)

Simple logic and reasoning should have convinced her that a spider this size couldn’t possibly leap that far without landing in the water and drowning itself. However, logic and reasoning had no place in Deborah’s mind when her fears took over. Her raised elbows seemed to be glued to the sides of the tub, her hands now clenching the rim. Soapy water rolled off her breasts and she started to shiver as the cool air rushed in around them. She was paralyzed with fear, like a deer in the highlights, her mind overloaded with signals, rendering it incapable of issuing any commands to the rest of her body. She noticed her knees were still spread wide, as if inviting the little monster to dive right into the water between them.

They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity.

(“What are you waiting for? Take your washcloth and smack the damn thing!")

Finally, the spider lifted its forelegs up and then down again. It seemed to be gloating, laughing at her!

(“Damn it, Girl, MOVE. MOVE!”) she screamed at herself. (“If you can’t kill it then just stand up and get out of the tub. That’s all you have to do. MOVE!”)

Suddenly, everything went black. Her heart felt like it had jumped against her chest.

(“OH GOD! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LIGHTS?”)

It was a black out. It had to be. The house was completely dark, and the timing couldn’t have been worse! She was still trapped in her own tub with the spider only a few feet away, unable to move a muscle, only now she couldn’t see a damn thing either! She squinted and peered though the darkness. She could barely make out the white tiles on the facing wall, and the tub faucet, but she couldn’t tell if the spider was still there or not. For all she knew, it could be crawling along the rim toward her arm. Her eyes darted everywhere,

(“Where is it? WHERE THE HELL IS IT?”)

Suddenly, she felt something moving down her right breast. Terrified to the point of hyperventilating, she slowly lowered her eyes and to her relief, realized that it was only a bead of water trickling down. Her eyes darted over to the spider again, or at least the spot where it was last seen before the lights went out. Now growing accustomed to the darkness, she could definitely see something on top of the faucet. It was the spider. The damn thing hadn’t moved an inch!

The last shock had somehow emboldened her, telling her that she HAD to move, or maybe it was just that in the dark she couldn’t see its beady eyes staring at her anymore. Nonetheless, it still took all the will she could manage just to slide her arms down into the water. Keeping her own eyes glued to the little beast, she brought her hands together between her legs, and turned them up, trapping some of the water in her palms. She then counted in her head … one … two … three, and splashed the water against the opposite wall, knocking the dark shape off the faucet.

Deborah immediately sat up, splashing water everywhere. She almost tripped over the edge of the tub as she stumbled out. She found a towel, quickly wrapped it around herself, then raced out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

There was little time to get over her shocking encounter. Gripping the towel with one hand around her body, she used the other to feel her way to the bedroom. Twice she bumped into something hard and cursed, but finally she managed to make it to the window and pull the curtains open to allow moonlight from the outside to fill the room. The first thing Deborah noticed was that all the homes on her street were still lit -- all of them except for her house!

“Great,” she whispered to no one, “the circuit breakers must have been tripped.”

She dried herself off, then quickly put on the panties and silk robe she had laid out on the bed. She tried the phone, but that wasn’t working either. When she first moved in, Mr. Ryerson showed her where to find the breaker box – in the basement, between the furnace and water heater.

Deborah was still terrified about going down there, but if there was one thing she learned from what had just happened with the spider in her tub, it was just how crippling her phobia could be. All her life, she avoided having to face it. She didn’t go on camping trips or hikes for fear that a spider might crawl into her sleeping bag. She always tried to avoid dark, musty places, like attics and cellars, because she knew they would be there, lurking and waiting for her.

Now they were in HER home! They had found her, but she wasn’t going to let them rule her domain! She became angry. Grabbing a flashlight out of her night table drawer, she decided to go back to the bathroom and settle THAT score first, then go down to the basement and re-set the switches in the breaker box.

Slowly, hesitantly, she opened the door about a foot and slipped past. The spider was still in the tub, but it had managed to climb out of the water. Now the little beast was trying to crawl up the slippery wall tiles to a small window ledge above. Deborah opened the drain and waited until all the water was gone before turning the faucet on again. The spider hadn’t made much progress in its attempt to ascend the wall tiles. She pulled the lever to activate the shower, then turned the showerhead upward, toward the evil creature.

The water pressure quickly forced the spider off its perch and into the pool below. It struggled, flailing its eight legs in a grotesque way, trying to grip onto anything to pull itself out of the water, but there was nothing to take hold of. Eventually it was sent streaming down the drain, through the pipes, and far away from her bathroom.

Deborah breathed a sigh of relief, “I GOT YOU!”

She was tempted to step under the shower and rinse the soap off her body, but she was still too afraid to climb into the tub. Maybe it was still alive, holding onto some hair lodged in the drain, waiting for the right moment to pull itself back up and seek its revenge.

The thought made her skin crawl!

She knew it was just her phobia, making the situation much worse than it really was, but there were bigger fish to fry. She needed to go down to the basement and get the lights on while she still had the nerve, so she shut the shower off.

Leaving the bathroom, Deborah made her way through the dark house to the basement. The short walk down the hall seemed like a mile. When she finally reached the door, she paused, took a deep breath, and opened it. The long flight of steps looked even more menacing in the dark. The empty web still hung in the corner, undisturbed. She felt the familiar tightness in her stomach. She tried the light switch, just in the hope that . . . nothing.

“Spiders are quite harmless, ma’am,” she whispered to herself, repeating what the exterminator told her over the phone and almost laughed out loud.

Drawing a long breath, she slowly took her first step, then another, and another. The steps creaked underneath her bare feet, as if announcing her presence to anything that might be listening. Passing through the doorway at the bottom step, she was mindful to stay clear of the web that hung above.

The basement was a damp and grody place, much like an old root cellar, the kind of place rife with mildewed dust that would sift downward whenever a body traversed the kitchen floorboards above. The cellar at her parents’ house was just like it, and she never liked going down there. Deborah scanned the space around her with the flashlight and felt a chill rise in her body when she noticed another web stretched between two over-hanging pipes. Deborah pulled the belt tighter around her tiny silk robe, then moved forward away from the steps, wishing she had thought to put on something a little more appropriate for such a grim journey.

There were boxes stacked everywhere and pieces of old furniture that Mr. Ryerson had promised to move out, but never got around to. She carefully navigated her way through the maze to the back of the stairs while flashing the light nervously in all directions.

One turn to the right and she was behind the staircase. There were more spider webs now, many more. So many, in fact, that she couldn’t believe what she was seeing -- in corners, on the walls and even thicker masses of sticky silk festooned between rafters above! Their larders were clotted with tiny silk-wrapped victims, an ever-ample feast, enough to feed a large army. Some of the drained little bundles had already been cut loose and rained down upon the basement floor like grisly confetti. Deborah moved forward while trying not step on them with her bare feet. She could hear that familiar little voice inside her head screaming at her to run, but she refused to listen to it. She was not going to let the fear control her actions. Not this time.

Facing her from the opposite wall, the furnace and water heater stood like a pair of darkened sentinels. The breaker box was hanging on the wall between them, hidden in their shadows. Drawing a breath, she carefully stepped closer while shining the light ahead of her to bring it into view. It was then, she made another grim discovery.

The box hung in the midst of a vast sticky chaos of webbing that crisscrossed the space between the furnace and water heater. Deborah didn’t see any spiders, but like the rafters, there was plenty of evidence dangling there to prove that this space was a veritable hub of arachnid activity.

She pointed the light into the center of the spider colony and peered into it. The door on the breaker box had been left open, and the switchboard visible enough to see that every one of them had been tripped. That was easy enough to fix. Simply reset each switch to the ON position, and then get the hell out.

The only catch was, she would have to reach into the web to do it!

Deborah felt herself move closer. Her mind was cluttered and disoriented by her fears, but something deep within, her rational side perhaps, was telling her body to finish what she came down here to do. She was a foot from the web now. Her hands were shaking terribly, but she managed to set the flashlight down and pull the loose sleeve of her robe all the way up past her shoulder to bare her arm.

("All right . . . you can do this. Just reach in there and flip the switches.")

Taking another breath, she slipped her hand carefully through the thin sticky strands of spider web. Her eyes narrowed in fear and disgust. She didn't want to touch them. She also didn't want to rouse the spiders lurking within. She turned her head away and closed her eyes completely, her heart beating like drum now against her chest, sweat beading out on her forehead as she stretched the whole length of her naked arm all the way up to her shoulder into the dark silky mass. For a desperate moment, she couldn't find the box. Squeezing the bunched sleeve nervously with her other hand, she leaned forward even further until she felt the web touching the side of her cheek, then stood on her toes and tried to keep her balance, her fingertips searching frantically in the darkness.

Deep within the web, her hand brushed a strand, then another, and another, signaling the occupants. Deborah knew it. She imagined their bristled legs, all thinly hinged angles, testing the silks. She could almost feel the multitudes of minute gems, the black and lifeless eyes of tiny demons, gleaming, watching. She froze in fear and in awful fascination -- caught with her whole arm in the midst of a lethal and alien world.

Deborah was about to give up when her fingers finally discovered the switch panel. Closing her eyes again, she ran her hand along the row of breakers and flipped each switch with a load CLICK. After the last circuit was reset, she quickly pulled her arm out, stepped back about six feet and sank down to her knees, trembling.

She remained there for some time, until her hands stopped shaking and her breathing became more controlled. She felt a few strands of silk clinging to her arm and quickly brushed them off in disgust.

Grabbing the flashlight, Deborah finally rose to her feet and looked around. Re-setting the breakers obviously didn’t work, because she had turned the light switch on at the top of the steps before going down, and the basement was still dark, which meant the whole house was dark also.

(“Shit! All of that for nothing!”)

There was no way she could stay another night, not after finding all these spider webs in the basement. There could be hundreds of them crawling all over the place! Crawling inside the walls! Her only option now was to pack what she could and check into a hotel.

(“Tomorrow, that exterminator will be here, and the landlord is going to have a cow when he hears about this, but at least everyone will believe me now. In the meantime, I’ll get an electrician over here too. I’m not coming back to this house until the lights are working and every fucking spider is gone.”)

As Deborah stood there contemplating what to do, she became aware of dry, scurrying sounds all around her. It was soft at first, but then it grew louder, closer. It sent shivers running down her spine and the goose bumps popping on her arms. She backed away slowly, but she had no idea where to retreat to, for the sounds seemed to have no discernable source.

Then suddenly, a movement off to her right caught her attention. She turned the flashlight on it. A brown spider, with a smooth, fat body and long spindly legs scurried out from behind a box. The thing was huge! Almost two inches in diameter! Another followed, then another, and another. Deborah screamed and dropped the light. It clattered on the gritty the floor and went out, plunging the room into darkness.

(“Oh God no!”)

She fell to her knees again and groped for it. The sounds grew even louder, somewhere in the dark, like hundreds of tiny little legs clicking across the concrete . . . coming toward her! When her fingers found the light, she tried the switch. Nothing. She shook it frantically until the bulb fluttered to life. By then, the spiders were scurrying everywhere, dropping from the ceiling, covering the floor of the basement like a carpet, and blocking her path to the stairs. There were not hundreds, but thousands of them! Some as big as the first, some not even half that size, but no less menacing. All of them had the same dark brown body with a bulbous back end, the long spindly legs, and a thick outer skin that made them almost impossible to kill.

She backed toward the wall, a primeval panic overtaking her as she groped for the door latch into the crawl space. It was her only way of escape. Deborah remembered there was a window in there. If she could open it and somehow squeeze through, then she would be safe outside. Her fingers fumbled with the latch, unable to make it turn, while the spiders formed a circle around her and closed in. At last, she regained some control of her shaking hands, just enough to get the door open and jump through.

The crawl space was too small for her to stand up in, and the dirt floor probably hadn’t seen the light of day since the house was first built in the 1950s. The air had a thick, musty smell, like a tomb left undisturbed for hundreds of years. Deborah crawled over the dirt on her hands and knees toward the window, while trying to keep the dust and cobwebs (and who knew what else) out of her hair from the floor rafters above. The opening was frightfully small but thought she could squeeze through it. When Deborah got closer, she froze and cursed out loud.

"Oh, NO . . . NO . . . NO!"

The latch was broken off, and the window itself, had been sealed ages ago with putty. Looking back, she could already see dozens of spiders crawling around the entrance to the crawlspace. Soon there would be hundreds, maybe thousands in the dark space with her, just like there were in the basement. She took the flashlight and began beating at the filthy glass until it shattered into many pieces.

Setting the light down, she quickly slipped her robe off and, wrapping it around her hand, brushed as much of the broken glass away as she could. Then she put the robe back on and pulled the belt as tight as she could. Poor Deborah was nearly in hysterics now.

Looking back, she saw the first spiders swarming over the opposite wall from the crawlspace door. She turned back to the window, thrust her arms through first, then pushed her shoulders and head forward and was immediately greeted by a scraggily juniper bush. That side of the house was overgrown with them, and they looked almost as old as the house itself. At least the fresh air against her face was a welcoming feeling, but it was immediately apparent that getting the rest of her body through this little window wasn’t going to be as easy.

Lying flat on her stomach, she began inching her way forward while trying her best to avoid the prickly branches. Just as she expected, the opening was extraordinarily tight, but once her shoulders were free, she was able to brace her arms against the sides of the house and wiggle forward until her breasts popped through. She had to pause and catch her breath a moment after the terrific squeeze.

Pushing away from the house with her hands now, her trim belly slid out of the window fairly easily, but when her hips touched the inner edges, Deborah knew she was in trouble. She pushed as hard as she could, wiggling her bottom back and forth, up and down, trying to find some way to get through. It was no use. As slender as she was, there was simply too much butt and not enough window.

Then Deborah made another horrifying discovery. Not only could she not squeeze herself out, but she also couldn’t push herself back in either. She was REALLY stuck, hanging halfway out of the window, with her hips wedged as tight as a cork in a bottle, and the rest of her lower body still trapped inside!

“Oh God, PLEASE NO,” she screamed.

Deborah could actually hear the spiders, hundreds of them now scuttling about in the crawlspace, moving closer and closer. With a scream she kicked and flailed her naked legs to keep them away while squirming and pushing against the window frame with more frenzied panic than before.

“HELP! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME,” she choked a plea out to the neighbors behind her house.

For a brief moment, a vision of how she must have looked flashed into Deborah’s mind. She couldn’t imagine how to explain being caught in her own crawlspace window wearing just a tiny kimono robe and panties, but the horror behind her quickly erased any shame.

“PLEASE HELP . . . HELP . . . I’M STUCK!”

She tried calling again and again, but no one came out. No lights came on either.

At this point, she had given up any chance getting out. All she wanted now was to somehow squeeze back into the crawlspace and free herself, so with a grimace, she grabbed for the nearest bush and tried to ignore the little stickers as her fingers searched for something to hold onto. When she found a sturdy branch, she then pushed, with all her strength while twisting her hips against the hardwood frame. By some miracle, she felt herself inch backward a little, and with a sigh of relief, she continued to push and work her hips until they were finally free. It only took a fraction of effort now to get the rest of her body back through the window.

Kneeling in the crawlspace again, Deborah tightened what was left of her robe around her again and turned, just in time to see not hundreds, but thousands of spiders closing in less than three feet away. She screamed, and without thinking tried to rise to her feet, bumping her head hard against one of the floor rafters.

The blow almost knocked her unconscious. Blood began to seep from her golden hair, turning it bright red. Dazed and disoriented, she somehow managed to crawl to the far corner of the crawlspace. She sat with her back pressed against the wall and watched in horror as the swarm overtook the window, blocking her only escape. They were also crawling all over the flashlight, which she had left behind in haste.

Looking around, she noticed a spot about six feet to her left where the wall had crumbled away, exposing the earth behind it – and what appeared to be a hole. Suspiciously, that was the only place the spiders hadn’t reached yet – as if a path were deliberately left for her.

Was this some kind of a trap? Could these damn things really be that smart?

She suddenly felt a burning sensation on her ankle and noticed that one of the spiders had just bitten her. It was small, only about the size of a dime, but it’s bite hurt like hell. She jerked her leg back and stomped its little body into the earth with the heel of her foot. Trap or not, she had to do something, so she quickly crawled over to the broken wall and the gaping, black hole yawning ominously at her.

As Deborah got closer, she held back a bit, a twinge of fear shooting through her body. It looked like a burrow of some sort that measured about three feet in diameter. What animal could possibly have dug this, she had no idea, nor could she tell how far back it went, or if there was even an opening at the other end!

She had no choice now. The spiders were closing around her again, forcing her into the hole. She lurched forward and started to crawl. The darkness crept in around her as her body blocked what little light there was from the crawlspace.

About six feet in, she realized this was a horrible mistake. The hole was getting smaller, until there was very little room for her to maneuver in. Thrusting her arms in front of her, she began pawing at the dirt while wiggling her body forward. She had no choice now but to keep going and hope there was another opening to the outside. Then she felt another spider crawling up her thigh toward her panties. That drove her into hysterics. She screamed and kicked to get it off, scraping her knees against the sides of the hole.

Deborah wished she had stayed in the crawlspace now. At least there, she could move around and defend herself. Now she was trapped in this tight space about six feet underground. It was like being buried alive in a tomb, but the claustrophobia wasn’t really the issue. It was the spiders she feared the most. She feared them more than any nightmare her imagination could dream up. The thought of them hiking all over her body like tiny Sherpa guides, their filthy, hairy legs touching her flesh, and then confronting her, face to face, with their beady-eyed reality, was more than she could bear.

She continued to inch her way along, her hands in front of her guiding the way through the dark, when she finally saw an opening ahead and some faint light showing through it.

"Oh please, PLEASE let this be a way out!" Deborah cried out loud.

Grasping the sides, she quickly pulled herself through the hole and out the other side.

The whispers of sensations crossed her skin as she immediately became entangled in more spider webs. It was then Deborah realized she wasn’t outside, but merely in a larger burrow that the tunnel opened up into, with thick, milky white webbing draped all around her, some it so dense that it blocked her view completely. She noticed something else too – wrapped and hung like cocoons were the dried-out carcasses of mice, squirrels and even a cat. Terror gripped her heart, cutting off her breath as a scream whimpered from her throat.

Looking up and to the right, she saw another hole, and the evening light filtering in from the outside. Deborah whimpered a sigh of relief. Behind her, hundreds of spiders were now milling around inside the hole she had just crawled out of, creating an illusion that the walls were actually moving! Strangely, none of the little devils had ventured in after her yet. She wasn’t going to stick around and wait for them.

Still sobbing, she managed to tear through the sticky strands and crawled forward. The white silk robe she had first pulled out of her closet was just a filthy tattered rag now, her golden hair matted with blood from the gaping wound on her scalp, and her beautiful blue eyes had the wild look of a woman on the edge of insanity. As she approached the hole, she saw green grass lining the outer edges and the moonlight shining down like a beacon. She even heard the faint sounds of a cricket chirping in the distance. It was like music to her ears! Just a few more feet and she would be outside and free of this nightmare!

“Oh, THANK GOD,” she whispered.

Then something brushed against her shoulder; something heavy and course, like the bristles of a broom. A dark shadow rose and loomed over her, and when she spun around, she saw those haunting beady eyes, and managed to scream just before its fangs sank into her shoulder . . .

Ever since she was a little girl, Deborah Hawn was afraid of spiders. Deathly afraid. Everyone told her they were harmless, but she was too scared to believe them. Now, as eight long legs enshrouded her and pulled her into their dark embrace, she took small consolation in the fact that her fear had always been real.

-------------------

When Mike Ryerson came home from his fishing trip, his wife told him about the conversation she had with Ms. Hahn and that the tenant had taken it upon herself to hire an exterminator to spray his house.

“Did you tell her I’d handle it when I got back?”

“Yes, but she was very insistent and sounded upset over the phone.”

“Well she’s going to pay for it, not me,” he grumbled.

Then Mike checked his answering machine and found two curious messages from Bob with THRIFTY PEST CONTROL. The man said he had arrived at the house that morning as scheduled, but there was no one there to let him in. He tried calling Deborah’s phone but got no answer, then called the number her bill was to go to, which was Mike’s home number. Bob ended the message saying he was going to spray the outside first and then call back and see if someone could let him in to finish there. The second call came about a half hour later. Bob said he had just completed the work outside, but the tenant still hadn’t arrived yet.

Then there was something odd in what he said next.

During his inspection around the outside of the house, Bob noticed a spot nearby where the ground had given away. It was most-likely a sink hole – only it looked more like a large burrow that some animal had dug and it seemed to lead right to the foundation of the house. He ended the message saying that he would get a flashlight from his truck and take a closer look, then report back on what he found.

That was over an hour ago and the guy still hadn’t called in.

“The exterminator said I have some sort of sink hole near the house,” Ryerson called out to his wife in the kitchen. “If that foundation is damaged, then it’s going to cost me a fortune to fix! I’m going over and find out what the hell is going on.”

“But your supper is almost ready.”

“I don’t have time for that now. Just leave a plate in the fridge,” he grabbed his coat from the closet. “This might take a while . . .”

End