LatinosUSA

Grabbing the cast-iron doorknob in one gloved hand, I edged the ancient wooden door open a crack, then pull it wide. It opened without a sound, on well-oiled hinges. Not knowing at all what to expect, I stood stunned on the threshold of the old, small outbuilding. There I beheld in the depths of the room such a spectacular array of spider webs as I have ever seen.

It was an exquisite, minutely detailed architectural phenomenon, an enlacement of circles and spirals and loops and swirling threads of gossamer that truly boggled the mind. But there were no spiders. Was the fantastic web dormant, inert, abandoned, and no longer utilized by arachnids? What a waste, I thought somewhat perversely, when in fact I thoroughly hated and even feared spiders of every size and description.

But then I noticed something from the corner of my eye. There, in the farthest reaches of the magnificent web, was a rather large, plump rat, completely encased in silk. I felt a brief stirring of pity for a creature so helplessly trapped, but I soon overcame it, for I hated rats even more than I despised spiders!

I came to the farm three days ago, with my two cousins, Richard and Dean, intrigued as we were by the online ads touting the old-style midwestern autumn getaways. The site didn’t offer much in the way of entertainment, but as we were all serious antiquers, we thought that a survey of Bellows’s Farms and the environs was a good way to spend a week, searching for new pieces and perhaps some primitive artifacts for our shops as well as for our own collections.

Now I felt rather foolish. Locked doors have always held an allure for me, and when I took a room in old Bellows’s Bed and Breakfast on what remained of his farm, I was instantly intrigued by the small utility shack that was kept locked up tight. “What’s in there?” I asked him as we toured the property on the first day.

“Ah, but that would be telling,” he answered cryptically. And we walked on.

“How much you want for that water pump?” asked Richard, pointing to a pink-painted hand pump lying amidst a score of freshly harvested pumpkins, their orange, waxy skins shining in the noonday sun.

“Hunnered thousand dollars,” answered Bellows at once. Richard blinked, but said nothing. Dean laughed out loud. No more offers were tendered on our tour.

Whenever we paused to admire something old, such as the 18^th-century farming tools or the well-preserved hay wagon, a gem in the rough, Bellows would nervously tap the end of his cane on the parched turf, as if hurrying us along. It was frankly annoying. And, although he didn’t appear to really need it to move about, he kept that cane with him at all times.

That night, at dinner, we pumped the old man for information on the neighborhood, asked whether there were any dealers close by, but we could get little out of him.

There was only one other guest at the B&B, an old man in his seventies named Winters, who kept to himself, always wore a bright red sweater, and didn’t say much. He did say he would be leaving soon. For whatever reason, he seemed anxious to get away. The next night, when he didn’t appear for dinner, we supposed that he already left.

I asked Bellows about him, and he replied that Winters was “good and gone,” but added that he lived nearby.

All Bellows seemed interested in, unaccountably, was spiders! He talked of their mating, their breeding, what they ate, how they lived, subjects I frankly was not too keen on. “The mom spider,” he said with relish, “likes to eat fresh meat, so she stalks her prey when pregnant rather than feeding off what she has stored in her web.”  

Ugh, I thought. Who cared?

He seemed fond of rats, too. In fact, he kept an unnamed pet rat with him at dinner and fed it from the table. I shook my head in dismay, my appetite ruined.

Dean and Richard likewise explored the property, looking as I was for antiques, but on their own initiative. We were a competitive bunch. In fact, I hadn’t seen either one since dinner the evening before. Where had they got to? One thing for sure, I solved at least one mystery on the old Bellows farm. I wondered how they fared. Smirking, the two of them vowed that they would skin the old man and get what they came for. They were keen traders and negotiators.

After several days searching the property, I found in another old garden shed an assortment of huge, ancient, cast-iron skeleton keys. Surely one of them would fit the lock on the mysterious building. And it did! Now, back at the door to the shed, I smiled in satisfaction. Wait a minute, what was that, well behind the rat and stretching across the floor? I peered through the fabulous webbing and into the gloomy interior to take stock of what was there.

Oh, no! I gasped. A human body! No, it was only a flesh-colored manikin, likewise encased in silk. As an antiquer, it always amazed me how such improbable junk turned up in the most unlikely places. Then I thought, what if old Bellows should return and find me ransacking his shed? But he wouldn’t find me here. I’d lock up, replace the keys, my curiosity satisfied, and the old man none the wiser. I wondered at the mystery of it all. There was literally nothing here, not even a spider. And that’s when the lights faded to black, and a streak of lightning flashed before my eyes. The last thing I heard was a clicking on the floor of the shack.

I was here for hours, or at least so it seemed. Bellows snatched my wristwatch so I couldn’t tell the time even if I could reach it, but it was getting dark outside. I could tell because I could see through the crack under the door. Outside, I could hear crickets chirping, and somewhere in the distance, a dog was barking. My head still hurt from where Bellows clobbered me, probably with his damn cane. I could feel the blood crusting on the back of my head.

At least now I knew where Dean and Richard disappeared to. I was crammed between the two of them. There wasn’t a mark on them that I could see, but they were both dead. But I was still alive. Why? Straining my neck to see, I spotted a bright red swatch of cloth. Winters. He got him, too. We were in the back of the outbuilding, hidden in shadows. I could feel the webbing dancing around my face.

The silk of the web was tremendously strong; I couldn’t move a muscle. How could I get out of this? And why was I still alive? Then I felt something crawling across my shoulder, at the same time that I remembered what Bellows was talking about our first night here. The female spider, he said, when breeding, insists on devouring her prey alive. Alive? I feel a sharp nip at my side. A bite! Then another one! Finally, I saw the spiders. Thousands of them crawled over my face! And the rats. I heard them chirring and squealing all around my head. My gagged mouth struggled in vain to unleash the anguished scream that was building for hours inside my brain.

Published in “Synchronized Chaos”