Part 3 of The Harp arc. Part 3 of 3. No continuation. That, mes amies, I leave to your nightmares.
This is horror. It's Halloween season. Expect it from me.
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The soft strumming of a harp echoed through the hall. Maddie Fenton lay in bed, eyes wide open, earplugs set firmly in her ears. They weren't helping. The huge form of her husband slept peacefully next to her. She could see the pictures rattling on the nightstand in time with his snores. She knew the crickets outside were chirping away in the autumn heat wave. The house would be creaking and cracking as it settled down for the night.
She didn't hear any of it. The Fenton Earplugs blocked out all sound. All sounds except one.
The plinking, the strumming, the warbling, the sounds of that blasted orb harp.
Ever since bringing him home from the hospital Danny had refused every test they tried to run on him to the point of refusing to come home until they promised to leave him alone. As it was he didn't seem to trust them, staying out until after curfew every night then heading upstairs to spin another damned harp and practice. Some days she didn't even see him; he'd run off to wherever before she woke up and stumble back home after she'd given up and gone to bed.
There was no denying it. Whatever had happened to him had changed him.
The music stopped. Finally that hellish, haunting music stopped. Maddie waited until she was sure it was over before getting up and pulling a plug out of her ear. The deafening roar of Jack's snoring blew her back for a moment. The other earplug came out and she crept out into the hallway. The snoring lessened in intensity as she headed down the hall to Danny's room. Just to check on him.
She gently pushed his bedroom door open. A shudder tore through her form as she took it all in.
Some features were familiar, maddeningly familiar. The computer in the corner. The backpack next to the desk, papers haphazardly stuffed in and around it. The messy bed. The half-clothed body sprawled out on top of the covers.
Some features were new. New and frightening. The cobwebs draped over every corner. The tiny eyes of lurking spiders shining in the wan light from the hallway. The sheets of webbing draped over the window, some dull gray, some glowing a sickly green. The remains of a large orb web still anchored to the walls, the bed, the doorknob. The orb itself was wrapped around her son like a net, green glowing strands crisscrossing his shoulders, his face, entrapping his arms. It was like he'd played until he passed out from exhaustion, falling right into his own web.
Maddie held back a disgusted gag and closed the door.
She wasn't going to sleep tonight. Maybe never again.
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Danny left the house far too early for a weekend. He snuck out as the sun rose, staying deathly quiet as he left.
Quiet as a ghost. As a spider.
Maddie watched him leave. He noticed her scrutiny but only blushed with shame for a moment before he left. She heard his footsteps running down the porch stairs and then nothing. She sighed from the kitchen and her third cup of coffee. Time to try and put some normality back into this house.
She went into the hall closet and pulled out the vacuum cleaner.
She and Jack had tried to accept their son and his new... eccentricities. They'd bought him books of music. They even bought him a harp. He tried, at first, but not for long. Not long enough to forget what those damned spiders had done to him. Now the harp sat in the corner of his bedroom, strings missing, an orb web strung up within the structure.
Maddie vacuumed it away. She put the vacuum hose through every spider web she could reach. Sheets of webbing tore away from the window like diaphanous curtains, sunlight shining in for the first time in days. Light scattered off of invisible strands of silk all over the room, turning the empty space into a maze, a cage. She swung the vacuum hose around like a weapon, slashing strands and sucking up the remains. Green-tinged webs taunted her, shining with ghostly malevolence as they were ripped off the walls and sucked into the hose.
Through it all she could feel a thousand tiny eyes glaring at her. Well Danny's little spidery friends would just have to deal with it. This was her house and so long as he lived here he would act human.
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"I don't want to go back there," Danny said. The soft chimes of an orb harp filled his ears, soothed his mind, pulled his tension from him. The web pulled at his neck and tickled his arm where the guy lines were anchored. Still he sat, dutifully keeping still as the harp strings were pulled by one more talented than he.
The player would have given anything to hear those words. Anything to keep the boy for his very own. "They're your parents," Vlad said, his hands gently tugging and stroking the strings, coaxing beautiful music from the web. An audience of one sat at his feet, anchored to the web. An audience of thousands lurked around them, crawling along the walls, hanging from the ceiling, draped over their necks...
"They don't understand me," Danny said. "They don't like it when I play. But I can't not play. When I don't play I feel..." He gestured a bit, his arms waving about and throwing Vlad's orb harp into chaos. Strands of the spiral collapsed against each other as Danny moved.
A quick scuttle, the brush of long legs up his spine, and the stab of sharp fangs into his neck stopped his movements. Danny collapsed against Vlad, his head laying on Vlad's knee.
Vlad sighed as he looked at his harp, its pink-tinged strands in disarray. A wave of spiders swarmed up his body to repair his harp for him. Vlad instead busied himself with his younger accompanist, running a hand through black hair. "I know how it feels," Vlad whispered. "I know how terrible it is, not knowing when you'll feel the brush of silk, the stab of fangs, the burn of venom, the scuttling of a thousand tiny legs. I know what it's like for the music to get so loud you want to scream because there's no other way to let it out."
Danny snuggled against Vlad's knee. He did miss this. He missed the throbbing burn of the venom coursing through his veins, forcing his eyes to glow, awakening every cell, every molecule of his body. He missed the swarm of spiders and the weight of the giant mother spiders draped over his neck, listening to him play, humming in his ear. The one thing he couldn't figure out, though, was why. Why did this happen to him? Why couldn't his parents just accept it?
"Why?" he asked.
Vlad smiled, his eyes shining red. They closed for a moment and he gasped as a spider the size of his hand crawled across his face and wiggled down into his collar, snuggling against his neck. "They're feeding on us," he whispered. "They feed on the music. We will need to play for them until there's no more music left in us."
Danny did not expect that sort of an answer. "What?"
A spider the size of a large cat, a mother spider, crawled up the back of Vlad's chair and draped her legs over his shoulders. She tapped him with those legs and nibbled on his ear with long pedipalps. He turned toward her and nuzzled her as she brushed those fangs against his face. "We'll never be free again, Daniel," he murmured as though professing love to a bedmate. "And when we run out of music to play we'll crave it just as they do."
Danny went tense. The itching crawl of thousands of legs didn't feel so good anymore. He pulled away from Vlad's knee, breaking hundreds of tiny strands that had bound him in place, that he hadn't even noticed were there.
"I ran out of music a long time ago," Vlad said, turning red eyes on his prey. "Oh I can play and it is beautiful but it is nothing new, nothing satisfying. There's no soul to it. There hasn't been for years."
Danny wrenched the strands of orb harp off of his neck and arm. The eyes, the thousands of tiny eyes, they all turned to him. He could feel their hunger.
"Your music, Daniel," Vlad continued. "It is so beautiful. I knew the moment I met you that your music would taste so sweet. I knew that I had to have you. I had to keep you for my very own."
Danny tried to get up but his legs were bound uncomfortably. So many spiders and all their webs crawled over him, holding him down, tying him tighter. He felt the legs of a mother grab him from behind, pulling him to the floor before fangs stabbed into his neck.
The room started to spin. Danny looked up into the glowing red eyes of Vlad, of the spiders all around them. Only then did he realize...
Vlad's eyes glowed the same color as the spiders'.
Danny felt more fangs digging into him, all sizes, all along his arms, his legs, his face. He felt himself go limp as their venom drained him of his ability to resist. He felt himself being lifted up, saw Vlad holding him, saw him smile...
Saw his fangs.
"And now you're mine," Vlad purred. He bent his head down and Danny felt one last bite to his neck before everything went black.
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He never came back.
Maddie spent days sitting on her son's bed. The last time she saw her son he'd snuck out without a single word to her or anyone. His room had been left in utter spidery chaos, a chaos of webs and arachnids that never did reform after her battle with the vacuum cleaner.
She looked around the room, depressed and empty. Cobwebs were collecting in the corners, so scant and so normal that she barely noticed them. The harp stood empty and unstrung in the corner, the computer and bookshelves covered in dust.
The police never found anything. The Masters estate was empty and abandoned, even the spiders were gone. She and Jack never found anything either. Not even a single strand of glowing silk.
She had to face it, they said. He was gone. They were both gone. Vlad had taken the boy and they had disappeared. A man like Vlad Masters could easily disappear. He'd done it before. She had to face it.
But they just didn't understand. No one did. No one else heard it but she did. She heard the plucking, droning notes of Danny's orb harp every time she closed her eyes.