Spider

Researcher's insight into the Spider
Undated

More people than you think suffer arachnophobia. A primal fear of something poisonous lurking, weaving traps, able to scale any surface. At odds, though, with its domestic function: keeping a dwelling clear of flies and other undesirable creatures. A spider the size of a quarter, though, is manageable. But, at the size of a horse, even the most rational and logical would recoil in disgust at an eight-legged arachnid, gnashing its mandibles, expelling coils of webbing.The Spider strikes the ardent occultist as one of the most outlandish and monstrous examples of the hysteria that so gripped the bayous. An example, though, that in all its multifaceted dimensions and exhaustive iterations, vindicates that hysteria.

References keep cropping up throughout the archive, of something not quite human and not quite spider, a semi-sentient mass of limbs, poisonous in both body and intent.

The hunters were pragmatic, that much can be said. Most information preserved concerned how to combat such a beast. It hit hard, then retreated to the shadows to ready its next assault. Hunters were advised to keep moving, as the Spider could apparently spit poison, which lingered some time after in the air.

Melee weapons, which could slash or pummel, proved effective at rending its limbs and breaking its bones. Poison and other toxins were ineffective.

I'm sure that a more fastidious study of the source text would doubtless reveal more insights.

The best sources I found to work with though were interviews given by the notorious JV. A detailed physical description, and at least reference to Black and Scognamiglio (the latter suspiciously silent on the subject in his own writing). Some pages missing, though the most relevant are reproduced here.

What is known though, is that this Spider was of the greater possessions of the greater evil that lurked there. All the more that can be discovered of it, the more clearly we will see the picture as a whole.

Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
1/5

-2-

(...)

Of Dr Reed, there was no sign, but the rest of his party was dead. How long were they holed up there? Bodies wasted thin, sprawled where they'd fallen, flies covering them like grave clothes. Chests disemboweled, organs consumed.

I dug a pit as the rain poured. The exertion, the cold wet, exhausted me. I dragged the first body through the mud from the barn to the hole. It left a trail of offal. Crows flocked in. They rose cawing murder each time I passed through with another corpse. With my back turned, they descended back to the entrails. Faster each time.

The final was the smallest, a child. I remembered her face. Blank eyes. The crows did not rise, well fed. I kicked them aside, dragging the body of the girl through the mud, too weak to even shoulder her. Night fell as I backfilled the mass grave, the crows mournfully scorned the remainder of their feast.

The first time we fought the Spider, I remembered that night, that pit, that child's face. Swimming up at me, out of sodden earth and memory.

We never again found the grave I'd dug. Too many long nights. Too many crumbling barns. Too many pits excavated, in earth turned a hundred times, plowed by processions of hunters burying the dead and killing them again.

But it was the girl's eye, leering out of a fold of the Spider's flesh, screeching, pleading, spitting. The poisonous bile burnt my own eyes like hell. I was blinded, I stumbled out of its nest, clawing at my eyes to clear it.

Seeing that eye, the thought struck me that Reed was responsible for this. But it was impossible. Even in his most macabre faculties, he came up short. The spider was the work of something more evil. More primal.

Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
2/5

-3-

The others refused to hear of such a thing and were yet inclined to disbelief. My legitimacy at that point was waning. But I didn't recognize it then, hindsight is twenty twenty.

"John," I remember Huff saying, "Your account is simply misguided. The form this being has taken, that of a Spider, is of the class Arachnida. Insects are of course Insecta. Our accounts of the Demon all align on the simple observation that in all its diverse manifestations, it favors the form of the Insect - that which most aligns with its inner malignant machinations." Or some waffle like that. The others agreed.

Then the other hunters brought in their reports. That such a beast existed. It went at odds with everything we knew. Why a Spider? Scognamiglio, genius if there ever was one dumb enough to hunt, figured it out, of course. Why it was different, what it was for. For me it was too late, the damage to my reputation was done, the AHA in disarray. That's another story. One we'll have time to go into. But that's all to do with the Twins.
Anyway.

We did what we could to kill it, and a hunter did so. Daniel Glanton . Ah, that name's familiar to you? He was the first I knew of. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Then another hunter made a claim to have killed it again, and proved it. Then another. I killed it. I did what I could to verify the stories, but a pattern emerged. There was more than one of this thing. But: never more than one at once, if that makes sense. It was re-forming. Scognamiglio would have been able to explain it better.

As the money rolled in, the competition became fiercer. Friendly rivalries became outright firefights. We all wanted a piece of it. Thought not in a literal sense, as banishing burned up most its body.

We weren't getting any closer though, and though I'd seen it once, that girl's face wasn't going away.

Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
3/5

-5-

I told you already that the Spider poisoned me real bad the first time I fought it. I don't know if it affected my memory, if that was in the poison, but it seems likely, because I remember little else about that night.

I had come through to a dock, central in the dead zone. Scognamiglio likely presumed later that this was its origin location, where it first - manifested. I can't attest to that being true.

When I arrived, there was a hunter bleeding out in the dirt. In one hand was a machete, in the other, an unhuman appendage. I recognized him, a Populist from Alabama. I put him out his misery.

I didn't know then, but that body part had belonged to the spider. It had once been a forearm, I think. Too many joints, one ended in a large knuckle and branched off into two deformed toes or fingers. Impossible to say. It was tipped with a thick black nail. The flesh was raw and blistered where it wasn't calloused.

The exact function of that appendage soon became self-evident. Entering the dock, I could hear something moving around, though couldn't see where. The interior was strange, as if it was covered in something: the angles were softened, like under dust sheets. Giant strands of white ropy webbing, I saw as my eyes adjusted to the light.

I found myself then in an open room, light streaming in from the upper windows, a half built boat sat rotting. I could not spot the origin of that scuttling I'd so far heard.

Black viscous liquid, a droplet the size of my fist, splattered onto my sleeve. Instinctively, I followed the tendril of viscous bile upward, toward the ceiling where her eye peered back. Hanging off a beam, ready to pounce, lurked the twisted and malformed mass of my quarry.

As it pounced, I had time for a single shot. It must have struck true: the monster, for a moment, was stopped in its tracks. A moment that, on reflection, saved my life.

Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
4/5

-8-

The time I killed a Spider, I was more prepared. I'd searched Black's journal for the relevant pages, but I fear my copy is missing them, and that may be the only one left.

At the time though, he had carried out a great feat in just compiling the information. We were divided, every hunter for themselves. At that time, I'd sooner kill you than give away a hard fought trade secret. Black had managed to extract hundreds. Of course, the price had been paid in blood, just not his own. Knowledge is of course more valuable the less it's distributed.

The Spider was formed of many human forms, shaped together into one entity. Black termed the central human the "alpha entity." The Spider has, after all, one head, located in the mandibles. Its sensory and faculty. There was a bulbous, swollen mass on its back. That was the lungs, heart, stomach. All grossly engorged to give the Spider athletic endurance and agility.

Thing is, one man don't have enough limbs. A few extra have to be grafted on. Some are still recognizably human, others, well, not. It's not exactly clear when one begins and another ends. Black observed some legs had as many as five joints. The mandibles are the most malformed, each two arms fused together, the strength to punch clean through a man.

Reed's party had become one. I'd even made it first possible, burying them together. See, a Spider must be formed out of a number people who'd shared great and insurmountable suffering. The bayou was full of that.

So, if it's human in its construction, you might ask: how did it make web, or how did it produce poison? Black could only guess. "Inverting the function of the liver?" I remember he'd put in the margin. Doesn't make sense to me. Might've made it resistant to toxins and poisons itself. Essential when you think what it was designed to catch.

Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
5/5

-9-

And that's just what Black wondered about. Why was this thing designed to be so deadly? So much more developed than any others? He thought it was simply a builder. There was these huge cocoons, in the church for instance. Incubating more and more of the plague.

Scognamiglio had his own theory. Even explained it to me once. I don't remember the circumstance of our meeting. It was sometime after I'd killed it myself. I believe he cashed out my bounty, even. He said, part of the Devil, The Lord of the Flies, the Sculptor, whatever you want to call it, went bad. Not often, but they did. When it weakened, they went feral, or something like to that. Hard to imagine, isn't it? The Spider, Scognamiglio speculated, was there to make sure that didn't happen. It was faster and stronger than anything else, symbolically different to the insectoid forms of the others. It's function was cauterization. Destroy the bad parts. Trap them in webs. Kill them. Eat them.

I was never witness to such behavior, never saw it, didn't believe it. Scognamiglio though, he was a smart one. Argued his case. He said that obviously, when hunters were after it, the Lord had greater concerns than cutting chaff. Didn't help him in the end though, did it?

But coming back to Black, that the Spider was there as a builder, was just as viable really. Or I hope so. You'd have thought that our priorities would have been straight. That if the Spider was eating the bad parts, we'd have let it eat to it's hearts content. Less for us to kill. Nicer to think we were stopping it from building something new, right?

But, in all honesty, I think even if we'd have known that, I don't know if we would have done any different. I'm inclined to believe Black. Less speculative. More concrete. In the end, what it does don't matter. It's how it dies.