Funhouse (16 page)

Still the party went on.

Still the spiders scurried.

Dale Thompson crossed the room, standing in front of Andy with a distracted, uncomfortable look on his acne-ravaged face.

“Hey Andy, you drinking that or what?” Thompson said pointing to the bottle clutched in Andy’s hand.

“
Uh...Yeah. No... I don’t think so.” Andy replied, unable to rationalise his thoughts.

“
Mind if I have it?”

“
No, go ahead.” Andy mumbled, handing Dale the barely touched, too warm beverage.

“
Thanks. Take it easy Andy.”

“
Yeah. You too.” He said as he watched Dale swagger away.

Dale’s T-shirt was swarming with hundreds of spiders, crawling over and under each other as they explored their host’s portly frame.

              How could he not have noticed? Andy wondered, and as he considered the question, that little voice — the one that went so often ignored – popped up in his mind.

Dale can’t see them because they aren’t there. Not really. But you already know that, don’t you?

The thought sparked another question, which presented itself in his inner monologue with much less subtlety.

Am I insane?

He considered the question. He was nineteen. Reasonably intelligent, no history of mental-health problems. In fact, life had been pretty uneventful until he arrived at the party that night. But no matter how he tried to spin it, there was no explanation for them.

The spiders.

They were now everywhere, swarming out from behind furniture, and covering almost every wall and surface.

              He glanced at Andrea Gill, she who had cheated in last month’s chemistry exam by reading his answers. He had let her, because he didn’t care. He was going places, and regardless of her cheating ways, the Andrea Gill’s of the world were destined to become single parents, welfare scrounging fuck-up losers for life.

He watched in fascination as a fat house spider with disproportionately long, spindly legs scurried up her body, finally coming to rest in her hair. One thin black leg clung onto her cheek as the spider paused above her ear.

Andrea carried on talking to her friends, none of them spotting the new addition to the party.

Yes.

He thought to himself as he looked at the table full of half-eaten buffet food, now pulsing and flexing with a life of its own as the arachnid mass explored the fleshy sandwiches and small containers of dips and breadsticks.

Yes indeed.

He supposed that the little voice in his head might be right. He could well have lost the plot, gone mad, bought himself a ticket to the funny farm, lost a few vital sandwiches out of the picnic basket. Because the world ticked on as normal, but for him, it was filled with spiders.

Spiders here, spiders there, spiders everywhere.

He felt a shrill, giddy laugh begin to move up to his throat, and he knew that if he let it out they would hear, and like the words smallest army they would come for him. He knew it as a certainty.

The laugh was close now, and he lifted a clenched fist to his mouth and bit down hard enough to draw a little blood and make his eyes water. The pain didn’t bother him though, in fact, he welcomed it, because the laugh had gone, and the status quo was maintained.

He started to relax, and then drew a sharp breath.

There was one of them perched on his knee.

He looked at it, too afraid to swat it away, and

the spider looked back. He could feel its glassy multi eyed stare boring into him, and could do no more than wait to see what would happen.

It was as if time had stopped, and even though the party and its oblivious guests went on with the business of drinking, pairing off and trying to boost their popularity, his world was no more than the small square of denim on his left knee.

The spider skittered forwards, just a few inches, but it was enough to make Andy try to push himself back into the sofa. He was going to scream. He knew it and knew there was no way that he would be able to stop it this time.  When it came, he knew he would be gone — his mind broken as he fell into the black hole of perpetual insanity – but at the last second, the spider changed direction and ran instead off his leg and down out of sight into the dark place between the seat cushions.

He felt sick and saw small white spots dancing in front of his eyes. He was going to faint, and knew he couldn’t allow it to happen, because if he did they would come for him.

He laughed.

A short, shrill, cackle which went unheard amid the thumping bass and the constant stream of party chatter. Yes, he was sure of it. Something in his brain was defective. Something had broken, and now he could see them everywhere. He imagined how his life would be; living in his own personal world filled with spiders.

He heard a groan. Jonny’s date had come up for air, and when she smiled, thousands of tiny newborn spiders streamed out of her mouth and nose, covering her face and neck as they looked for dark places to shelter.

The terror bubbling in Andy’s guts told him that his brain was on the verge of shutting up shop and refusing to play ball, and so he closed his eyes, trying to regain a little composure and maybe bring himself under a modicum of control, but even that was no good.

Because even with his eyes closed he could still see them, cast in stark white negative on the blank canvas of his mind’s eye. He blinked away the image and found that his reality was only marginally better than the squirming, scurrying mass that lived in his brain.

He glanced towards the corner of the room, and when he saw it — saw
her
, he felt something break, a sharp
click
as whatever small thread had been connecting him to his sanity snapped.

Jenny was slumped in the corner.

Jenny.

The girl he had known since they were four-year-old neighbors. 

Jenny who had always seen him as more of a friend than the more serious thing that he one day hoped they would become.

Jenny who had brought him to the party, even though it was a place where a quiet, reserved kid like him wouldn’t have otherwise been invited.

However, all of that was before the spiders.

Her petite frame was swollen, chin resting on her chest. As he watched and his broken mind processed what was in front of him, he knew without doubt that he was irreversibly damaged.

He could see them moving
under
her skin, making it ripple and pulse, and bizarrely reminding him of childhood trips to the coast and the way the tides ebbed and flowed as they crept up the beach. They were streaming out of her nose and ears, and as he watched, her mouth slowly opened and a huge, thick-limbed monster of a spider pushed its way out. Andy had seen them on T.V. 

Bird eaters
.

He was sure that’s what they were called.

The huge spider dragged its immense body out of her gaping mouth, and flopped down on to her chest where it stood in splayed legged triumph. Andy was beyond screaming, beyond anything other than looking on with a sick and twisted fascination.

She’s the queen, and Jenny was her nest.

The thought danced, darted and spun in Andy’s mind, and when he couldn’t make any rational sense out of it, it danced and spun some more. He wanted to ask what it wanted. Why him? What did he ever do to deserve this?

But he couldn’t move, and his mouth remained tightly closed as still more of them came – a never-ending procession from every conceivable place in the room.

His skin itched, and his stomach danced as he tried to put the situation into some kind of order. But his brain wasn’t cut out for dealing with such horror, and so it had decided to leave Andy to his own devices.

He saw Jenny move, and for a moment, there was hope, hope that she was ok, hope that he could get her out of there and maybe then she would look at him in the same way he looked at her.

But it wasn’t Jenny that was moving, not really.

It was the spiders.

The spiders in their Jenny skin that were going about their business and making her loll and dance like a macabre marionette.

Spide
rs.

Spiders Spiders Spiders

He would do anything.
Anything
to avoid having to watch the jerky, skittish way that they moved in that horrible, stop start motion. Anything to avoid having to watch the spider filled Jenny puppet that pulsed and rippled along to the bass line of the party.

You know what it’s going to take. You know what you have to do.

The voice in his head whispered, and he did. As terrifying as the thought was, it was the only way. He lurched out of his seat with a defiant roar and did it before he could change his mind.

His scream brought the party to a halt. The music cut out and his fellow classmates, students, friends, and those that he was indifferent to were looking at him. He could feel their judging gaze, and found a bitter irony that for the first time in his life, he wasn’t an anonymous face. He was finally the center of attention.

The silence was broken by a single high-pitched scream. He thought it might have been Andrea Gill — she of the over the shoulder wandering eye on test days, but couldn’t be sure. Whoever it was; they set off a chain reaction, and the silence morphed into chaos.

Andy simply stood where he was and smiled. Because although the sounds of the screams were loud, at least they were natural. They were normal, everyday things that he could rationalise and make sense of.

He thought that the world made more sense when it was rational. And he thought that he would be just fine now that it was done. He began to laugh, a sound rich and hearty and full, because he had won.

The chaos was a thick, heavy thing and seemed to hang in the air like a physical entity. Yet, amid the confusion, he heard several distinct things.

Someone shouting for help.

Someone else repeating ‘oh god, oh god, oh god’ like it was some kind of bizarre mantra.

Someone quite close to him, crying.

He thought it might have been Jenny, and hoped that it was, because that would mean he had saved her. He would have looked for himself, but he had already torn out his own eyes.

He continued to laugh as the sound of police sirens drew close.

B
enson lived in the alleyway between Juniper Avenue and Grover Lane. He had always lived there, certainly for as long as I can remember anyway. He wasn’t a bum, if that’s what you're thinking. As far as I know, he never borrowed or asked for anything. I found out later that he actually owned a house - a nice one with a tidy garden and a cherry tree out front. But at some point, he'd chosen to live out his life in the alleyway instead. People thought he was eccentric, some whispered that he was mentally ill, or suffering with Alzheimer’s. But that, frankly, is bullshit. I know it’s bullshit because I saw him for what he really was.

That alleyway dosen’t even exist anymore. It’s a multiplex now, complete with a cinema, restaurants and all the other bells and whistles associated with modern living. But if you go and stand outside at just the right time of day, then you can almost still see him - a ghost from the past that reminds me that it was all real and not just a figment of my imagination. The doubt never lasts for long anyway. Especially when the sky becomes the colour of fire, and the shadows become deep and narrow and start reaching out of the dark places. 

I was twelve when I first encountered Benson. The world was a different place then of course. Nowadays everyone is so private, so inaccessible and desperate to keep themselves isolated and alone as they try to fumble their way through life. I guess I was just lucky, because when I was growing up, it was in a real community where you actually knew your neighbors and it was safe to go to bed without locking your doors at night. Hell, kids could even play outside without fear of being abducted or murdered.

I first saw Benson when I was out riding my bike with my buddy, Luke. Under normal circumstances, I’m sure that I wouldn’t have noticed him, but it was that special time of day, just before dusk, and something drew my attention to this skinny old man in the alley as he sat there at its mouth on a wooden crate just watching the world go by.

“Afternoon boys.” He said as we passed, grinning toothlessly and shielding his face against the sun, which had become a fiery red-orange as its leading edge began to dip below the horizon.

“
Hi,” I mumbled in response.

Benson nodded, then looked past me to Luke.

“Ooh, that’s a good one, ain't it?” He muttered, pointing at the ground.

I looked. Luke looked, but neither of us saw anything.

“What’s your name son?” He asked, watching me through watery, grey eyes.