Once upon a haunted time: a Halloween fic
Chapter 7. The den of the beast


"Let's go find OA and Maggie and get out of here," Jubal insisted.
Tiffany was about to say they didn't know where they were, when shouts reached them from far away.

"OA! OA, wake up! OA!"

It was Maggie's voice, no doubt. Without pausing to think about it, the four of them rushed towards the source of their screams, at the end of the corridor.

As they passed by the cursed room, Jubal made them move to the other wall. Beyond, however, they found that there was nothing.

"OA! OAAA!" they heard again, from inside the wall.

Stuart, Tiffany and Jubal looked at each other in bewilderment. Meanwhile, Isobel approached the wall, looking at it closely. The others saw her grasp an imaginary doorknob in the air, and feared that Isobel had lost her mind. She turned her hand.

"Isobel..." Jubal said worriedly.

And then, she pushed and her arm disappeared into the clothed wall.

"This way," she said and disappeared too.

Jubal gasped but followed her almost without thinking. Tiff and Stuart exchanged a hesitant glance, and went after them as well. It was like stepping through a cold tinted glass. On the other side, Isobel held a door open for them. They met at the bottom of some stairs.

"How did you know there was a door there?" Jubal asked her, dumbfounded.

"I don't know," she murmured, in puzzlement, and a little dizzy. I think I just... saw it there.

"Are you all right?"

Isobel blinked, as if she didn't know what to answer. Annoyed by her own confusion, she immediately started walking toward the steps.

Jubal stepped in.

"Wait. No, Isobel, you shouldn't come."

"Of course I'm coming," Isobel replied.

"No. You cannot."

"What-? Why not?" asked Scola.

"We're wasting time," Isobel said in exasperation. "I'm fine."

Her knees chose that moment to fail her. She leaned against the wall, refusing Jubal's solicitous help.

"No, you're not!"

"Why can't she come?" Scola repeated.

"Because she has come to die in there!" Jubal exclaimed, pointing to the next room.

Tiff and Stuart looked at her in shock.

Isobel started to dodge Jubal, but he stopped her again. She confronted him. "I'm not abandoning Maggie and OA to their fate, Jubal!"

"Neither am I!" he retorted.

"And what do you want to do?" Tiff said in dismay, "Leave Isobel here alone?"

Jubal looked like he wanted to break in two.

Stuart locked eyes with Tiff. "No, we're all going together," he said firmly. "We can't afford to split."

His partner backed him up with a stern expression. Isobel and Jubal had to agree with them. Tiffany and Scola passed them and ran up the stairs.

Isobel tried, but her strength failed her. She looked embarrassed at Jubal, begging him for help with her eyes. He did not force her to say it.

They found the switch on the outside and turned on the light. They burst into the attic floor. But they stopped dead in their tracks when the scene before their eyes defied their rational mind. The cobwebs and corpses covering the walls and ceiling, the gigantic spider looming over the prostrate OA.

Scola and Tiffany shot out of pure reflex.

Jubal had to hold Isobel because she almost fell to the floor. Where the others saw a monstrous spider, Isobel also found an even larger dense shadow, occupying the entire ceiling and controlling the creature as if it were a puppet. It had one of its appendages inserted into OA and another into Maggie; it seemed to be enjoying what it was getting from them immensely.

The bullet impacts wreaked havoc on the creature, amid bursts of disgusting, thick yellow blood. It had even lost a leg. And yet, when the spider's aberrant human face turned toward them as if caught by surprise, it showed not even a hint of pain. Persephone's face looked at them all with a laugh.

"Wow," she exclaimed in a voice as screeching as fingernails on a chalkboard. "You are so delicious..."

Her wounds began to heal. Her leg regenerated.

"This isn't... It's not real. It can't be," Scola gasped.

Jubal glanced at Isobel. "It can kill you," he growled, grimly. "So don't let your guard down."

Stuart gritted his teeth and squared his shoulders.

Persephone smiled mockingly at them. "Do you want him?" she asked, referring to OA. "Come get him," she challenged them.

Wiping his hand over his face, Jubal mustered resolve. "Scola, with me," he commanded, nodding to him. "Tiffany. Cover us."

Isobel clenched her fists as she watched them run toward OA. The spider's legs jerked forward, protecting her 'toy'. The ground was sticky and it was difficult to move. The two of them almost ended up impaled.

With her heart pounding, Tiffany took aim and shot Persephone in the face, who scrambled blindly. It gave Stuart and Jubal a chance to reach OA. They grabbed him under the arms and dragged him away from the monster.

However, when Persephone's face rebuilt, she was still smiling. Flooded with hopelessness, Isobel knew why: her dark appendage was still attached to OA's chest.

She and Jubal tried to revive him, but although they found a pulse, his eyes were blank and he was unresponsive to any stimuli.

The spider approached slowly, ominously. Stuart and Tiff aimed their guns again.

Maggie, Isobel thought then, and ran crouching towards her to the back of the attic.

"Isobel!" Jubal exclaimed, scared to death because he didn't know where she was going. Isobel was the only one who had seen Maggie on the wall. Letting out a curse, Jubal had to leave OA and follow her.

A leg ending in a claw descended toward them at full speed. Dodging it, Isobel stumbled and fell to her hands and knees, feeling as if her chest would crack open like a walnut. Jubal tugged at her, preventing the leg from hit her at the last moment. He tried to pull her back but Isobel screamed.

"Maggie!" And she pointed in her direction, to make him understand. The two of them ran, avoiding further attacks from the monstrous spider's other legs.

Fortunately, Tiff and Stuart were keeping her busy by shooting her in the eyes.

Reaching Maggie's side, Isobel pulled at the sticky thing, trying to free her.

Persephone let out a derisive cluck. "This is going to be so much fun…"

From the bodies on the walls began to emerge another dozen smaller spiders, the size of mastiff puppies, bearing Ariadne's infantile face. Tiffany and Scola recoiled, momentarily horrified.

"Don't think about it!" Isobel yelled at them. "Finish them off!"

But Stuart had to leave the fight to Tiffany, to try to move OA to a place where they could better protect him.

"Damn, buddy. You. Are. Too. Big," he mumbled, lifting OA up onto a table with great effort.

He rushed back to Tiffany's side just in time to cover her flank from the attack of one of those little girl-faced spiders. His mind rebelled again at what he was seeing. Besides, he was worried about Tiff. Beads of sweat beaded her forehead; she gritted her teeth through the pain in her shoulder. She seemed visibly repulsed as well, but Tiffany was just focused on keeping them alive. With a profound admiration, Stuart ignored the warning signs of the cut on his arm, which was going numb, and decided he needed to do the same.

"Scola!" Jubal then called him. He and Isobel were still struggling with the tissue covering Maggie. "Pocketknife!" he asked for.

Jubal had absolutely no idea why, but Scola was the only one who was fully clothed. He prayed that his agent would carry the pocketknife with him as they usually did on the field.

"What!?" Stuart asked, puzzled, as he dodged the bite of one of the spiders by the tenth of an inch.

Jubal's heart sank. There was no way they could get Maggie out of this thing without a sharp blade.

"Oh! Yeah!" Stuart exclaimed then, taking a step back to search in his pocket.

Grabbing an old Thonet standing coat rack, Jubal batted at the spiders to keep them away from Maggie. Isobel did the same with a chair. It wasn't possible to defeat them because, even if they took a while, they regenerated whenever they were killed.

"Here it goes!" Stuart called out.

He threw his pocketknife in a well-aimed arc. Jubal reached out, extending his arm to catch it in mid-air. Unfortunately, one of the giant legs managed to deflect it; it hit a wall where it bounced off and fell to the ground.

Without even a second's thought, Jubal dove to retrieve it, even if it meant the puppy-spiders would pounce on him. Isobel had to watch in anguish as Jubal rolled on the ground, avoiding several bites from chelicerae. He didn't managed to skip them all. One of them grazed his right arm.

Despite everything, Jubal returned triumphantly to Isobel, opening the knife. Between the two of them, they managed to cut and tear off the piece that was covering Maggie's mouth. She spat and gasped.

Jubal used the coat rack again to defend them, while Isobel continued freeing Maggie with the short knife, although she had to cut several pieces of Maggie's flannel pajamas.

"OA! OA, please!" Maggie shouted. "Someone wake him up!"

On the other side of the attic, dodging gigantic legs and dispatching spiders with bullets and kicks, Tiffany and Scola were protecting OA, who was still deeply immersed in his trance.

"Maggie! Maggie!" Isobel told her, holding her face. "Only you can wake him up. He needs you!"

That managed to bring Maggie out of her despair. She took several deep breaths and a steely resolve condensed in her eyes. Isobel saw the appendage parasitizing Maggie fly away with a silent snap. That made Isobel smile, exultant.

Persephone turned to them immediately. Isobel could feel her hatred almost physically, stealing her breath away. The pain in her chest almost paralyzed her.

Now, however, the small spiders that were now beaten did not rise again. Still, Jubal had serious doubts that he would be able to defeat the larger monster.

"Isobel…!" he urged her to hurry up.

Maggie just needed to get her feet loose. She was helping Isobel by pulling at the sticky tissue with both hands.

Emitting an angry gurgling noise, the spider launched the claws of its front legs at Isobel.

With a gasp, Jubal stepped in, engaging the creature with the coat rack, barely parrying the attacks. With an unexpected and swift movement, the demonic creature pounced. It snapped the wooden shank with its huge jaws, cutting it almost a foot shorter.

Exhaustion was overcoming Jubal. And his arm hurt. It was clear to him that he would be next.

~.~.~.~