They Like the Darkness

Natalie Briggs didn’t like spiders. In fact, she fucking hated them. From little money spiders to big-ass black widows, creeping into the country in bunches of bananas or lying in wait behind reinforced glass in zoos and safari parks, she hated them.

Natalie Briggs fucking hated spiders.

She hated the way they scuttled sideways across the floor, and how they made their webs in the darkest corners, and how they leapt out at her with their spindly, hairy legs and their evil eyes.

In short, Natalie Briggs was an arachnophobe.

Penny from the office hated spiders too, but her hatred was in a different league. Penny would attack them with a rolled-up newspaper; Natalie needed light artillery, if she was to fancy her chances.

“Have you tried conkers?” Penny had asked, after an arachnid in the bathroom had given Natalie a sleepless night. “It might just be an old wives tale, but they’re meant to keep spiders away if you leave them on the windowsill.”

So Natalie tried to find some conquers, but to no avail. The trees had lost their leaves, and all of the conkers had long since disappeared into the sticky pockets of schoolboys, who weren’t actually allowed to play with them in case someone lost an eye.

“Maybe it was acorns, anyway,” Penny had said. “Or pine cones. Something like that.” So Natalie stocked up on acorns and pine cones, which she bought in bulk in an online auction. She scattered them throughout the house on windowsills and mantelpieces, on shelves and in cupboards, until every room was filled with pine cones and acorns.

But it didn’t work, and Natalie still found herself reduced to a nervous wreck every time one of the eight-legged freaks made its way into her house, to lounge in the lounge or to swallow flies in the dining room.

Natalie had had enough. She fucking hated spiders.

Then, one day, everything changed. Natalie saw an ad in the back of a gossip mag which would change her life forever.

“Buy the Foxo 3000,” it said. “This revolutionary new ultrasonic device uses the latest technology to repel insects and arachnids. No home is complete without one! Be the envy of your family and friends! Only £59.99 plus postage and packaging! Buy now while stocks last!”

So Natalie bought a Foxo 3000, and waited impatiently for the postman to arrive. When he finally did arrive three weeks later, she was slapped with a customs charge, but Natalie didn’t care – it was worth it.

She hurriedly unpacked the Foxo 3000, plugged it in beside her alarm clock, placed it on her bedside table and turned it on. The ultrasound was ultrasonic, so she couldn’t hear it, but she could hear a low hum as the machine came alive.

The humming sound soon starter having the same effect as a light thunderstorm outside the window, of rain hitting the canvas of a tent or of waves lapping at the shore. She found it relaxing, and she was soon unable to sleep without it. And best of all, the spiders disappeared too.

That is, until the night of the power cut. Natalie was half-asleep in the darkness when she noticed it. The humming of the ultrasound machine faded into nothingness, and the sudden silence  was more noticeable than a car backfiring outside the window.

When she opened her eyes, she saw nothing but darkness. Her heavy blinds cut off all of the light from outside, and even the muted red from the digits on her alarm clock had disappeared, along with their power source.

Natalie reached for her phone, which she left on the bedside table, and she instantly recoiled when she found it. There was movement, an unwelcome scuttling and the tickling sensation of something brushing against her hand. She creamed, withdrew her hand, thought about the situation for a second, and then reached for the phone again.

This time, she managed to pick it up, and she hurriedly unlocked it and booted up the torch app that she used when she was the last person to leave the office and had to go around from room to room in the half-life, checking for ghosts and crackheads.

At first, the beam of light shone in her eyes and blinded her, but she swung the phone around to scan the room and immediately wished that she hadn’t.

She saw spiders, thousands upon thousands of spiders, spiders of all shapes and sizes, all swarming all over each other. They covered the walls, and the carpet, and the curtains, and the ceiling. They covered the bedside table and the duvet; they fell down from the ceiling and landed in her hair, swarmed beneath the sheets and covered her arms and legs. They were fucking everywhere.

Natalie opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out; the last thing she saw was the last thing she ever wanted to see.

****

Every day is different when you’re a forensic pathologist, but that rainy Tuesday in February took the biscuit. It should’ve been routine – a woman in her early forties had been found dead on her apartment, a suspected heart attack. An open and shut case, quite literally.

So you can imagine the surprise and the horror that they felt when the autopsy team made the first incision, only to find that she had no internal organs – none. Just several thousand spiders of different shapes and sizes, living in her hollowed out corpse like it was the cupboard under the stairs.

They like the darkness.

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