13
She could sense them, somewhere in the dark, somewhere close.
The creature that had been Jennifer Forester did not understand why the presence of the two creatures was different from the rest, nor why she felt so drawn toward them.
All she knew was the boiling of her blood, the frantic thrumming of the cells that formed her existence, a terrible vibration that seemed to make her head spin.
The blackness gave away nothing, and her ears, suddenly so sharp, so reliable, wisted this way and that, hoping to catch something on the wind, some answer that might abate the gnawing hunger that drove her.
Here in this scent was something different, something that stood out, some inexplicable gravity that she felt compelled to obey.
Maybe it was the consumption of these two creatures that would finally release her from the hunger.
Maybe the spider would let go and she would be able to sleep. God, she was so tired.
She reached out her bloodstained hands, finding only a solid object in front of her. They were there, right there. They should have been within her reach. So close she could smell them. The scent was so strong.
Intoxicating, overpowering.
She began to pound against the obstruction before her, roaring in impotent rage. She threw her considerable weight into it, oblivious to the pain as her soft flesh connected with it, frenzied.
And then, as she charged into it, her ears picked up the sound of something beyond. A cracking. Groaning. The sound of something loosening. It was beginning to give.
With a roar, she charged again.
.
.
.
Monica peeked over the low wall that served as a boundary for the flat roof, and her heart broke.
Henry was right. There, in the narrow alley below them, the one into which she and Henry had fled minutes before, stood their mother.
Jennifer Forester had a chunk of her arms missing, the forearm looking as though something had taken a bite out of it. What was left of her ragged dress was drenched in blood.
When the wind caught the flimsy material it was pulled apart, revealing sagging, naked flesh underneath.
Somehow this was the worst part for Monica, worse even than the empty sockets where her mother's eyes had been.
There was something so total, so final, about seeing her mother standing half naked on the streets, something that left Monica in no doubt that this parent was as lost to her now as the one that lay unmoving in the basement of his house.
She glanced at Henry, who was shaking his head as though answering a question, eyes wide and streaming with tears.
He began to emit a low moan, and Monica clapped her hand over his mouth, silencing him.
In the alley, their mother was standing near the door that Henry had smashed open.
As Monica watched, she swayed, appearing almost drunk, her head swinging back and forth. Monica tried to compartmentalise the horror of it, forcing the desire to scream into a dark corner of her mind.
She wanted to look away, but some part of her brain was still functioning rationally, something that told her that they needed to know what they were up against, and so she forced herself to watch.
Their mother began to move back and forth, small stumbling steps, moving in a circle, as thought trying to find something. Still her head was swinging around, and Monica realised suddenly that she was sniffing the air, like a dog trying to pick up a scent.
Her movements were becoming more frenzied, steeped in frustration, and then she roared.
It was a noise that Monica would never have believed could have come from her mother, a hoarse bestial scream of rage that made the hair on Monica's arms and neck stand up.
She realised that she was holding her breath, every muscle in her body clenched in terror. And then the pounding started. At first with her fists and then with her entire body, Monica and Henry's mother began to attack the door that separated her from her children.
Monica thought of the broken lock, and the deadbolt. She prayed it would hold and cursed herself for not returning to barricade the door as soon as they had known the house was empty.
A whimper escaped Henry's lips and the pounding in the alley below increased in intensity. Monica squeezed her eyes shut, afraid to look, and heard one final, enormous bang, and then silence.
When she peeked again, her blood ran cold.
The alley was empty, and the door, weakened already by the assault, had been smashed in.
Their mother was in the house.
"Oh fuck," she heard Henry say, the words reaching her as though from a great distance. "The ladder! We have to pull up the-"
"No time!" Monica screamed. "GO!"
She grabbed Henry's collar and thrust him toward the boundary that separated the roof from that of the next building. There was a sheer drop on two sides, but the terraced buildings would allow them to run at least some distance before negotiating a path to the ground became a problem. Even as Henry began to move, the door to the attic burst open, and the bloodstained monster that had been their mother rocketed toward them, snarling.
As Monica turned, she felt fingers grasping at her hair and cried out in pain as it was torn out at the root. She hurdled the wall, landing on the tiled roof of the next building, almost losing her footing and scrambling forward on all fours, feeling the angle of the roof working against her.
Henry was a few steps ahead of her, clumsily charging forward, each footfall loosening and cracking the tiles.
Behind them, their mother was also scrabbling, oblivious to the drop that yawned below them, scampering across the tiles, clawing for Monica's foot, missing by inches.
And then it happened, as Monica had known it must. Her foot hit a tile that betrayed her, slipped away, sending her crashing onto her belly.
Her mother was on top of her in a heartbeat, face diving forward, and in that instant Monica saw it all unfold: the teeth tearing into the flesh of her neck, snapping through tendon and artery, scraping on bone.
She shut her eyes, trying to block out the vision, the horror of the woman who had brought her into the world savaging her like a rabid bulldog.
And then she felt a heavy weight land on her chest, knocking the air out of her.
The tearing teeth did not connect.
Instead, when she opened her eyes again she saw her mother's body slumped on top of her, a sharp fragment of tile buried in her forehead, and her brother standing over them both, shaking, the honest, smiling eyes darkened and empty, as though the light that had powered them had simply been flicked off.
All over the city, similar acts of violence played out as the spiders fought for control.