Page 123 of Anathema

My eyes prickled with tears.

Something moved in my periphery, and I jolted upright.

Long, spindly legs stepped into view.

The spider I’d seen the night before, just outside my cell.

The quickening of my pulse accompanied the rough pounding of my heart as, again, I searched for something to throw at it. Unless I imagined it, the spider seemed to have grown since its previous visit, and it was then I considered that I may have been hallucinating the damned thing.

It didn’t advance closer, as if it couldn’t for some reason.

“Shoo!” I waved it off, not daring to step down from the bed.

From its furry back, it tugged an object that its long skinny leg placed on the stony floor on the other side of the bars. Frowning, I leaned forward, trying to make out what it’d placed there.

The spider skittered to the side, out of view, and I pushed to my feet, eyes glued to the object it’d left behind. A mirror, from what I could see of the shiny surface.

With no sign of the spider, I padded cautiously toward the cell door, eyes sweeping from one corner to the other. A thread of tension wound inside my stomach as I opened the door it seemed no one had bothered to lock, scanning for that damned spider.

My reflection stared back at me in the mirror, when I lifted it from the floor, and on lowering it, I caught the shine of something else ahead of me. I padded carefully toward it, eyes peeled for the slightest movement.

Dolion’s snores reverberated off the walls of his cell as I passed, and I kept on, toward the dark end of the corridor. Until I came upon the second object. A key.

In the distance, a sconce flared to life, startling me at first. And yet another object caught my attention.

On the floor.

A lock and chain.

I glanced down at the key in my hand and back to the door. Still no sign of the spider I’d seen. The logical side of my brain told me to leave it alone and return to my cell, because nothing good ever came from chasing after enormous spiders. As a child, I’d once tracked a tarantula along the edge of the woods and ended up getting bitten, leaving quite a knot on my leg.

The illogical and maddeningly curious half of my brain needed to know what was locked away, though. Surely, Dolion and I wouldn’t have been expected to sleep near something capable of harming us. It could’ve very well have been nothing more than more spiders.

A thought that squeezed my spine.

Questioning my sanity, I tiptoed closer, and the gravity of my decision to open the door left my hands trembling as I shoved the key into the lock. On a click, the lock opened, and I loosened the chain from the anchors that held the door closed. Every muscle shook, as I lifted the door on a creak of old wood and rusted hinges. Grabbing the sconce from the wall, I held it over the open door to peer inside. Nothing but darkness, and a ladder that disappeared into shadows.

I shifted the sconce to the other side of the door, the light illuminating a horrifically colossal spider web that took up the entirety of the wall.

A crashing sound snapped my attention away from the hole. “Maevyth! What are you doing!” At the end of the corridor, just outside of my cell, Rykaia stood over broken porcelain, her eyes wide with fear. “Get away from there! Now!”

A force banded around my waist, yanking me through the hole. On impact, zaps of pain shot up my spine, jagged flashes of light behind my eyes converging into an explosion of agony at the back of my skull. The door overhead slammed shut.

On the gravelly dirt beside me, the sconce burned, and I trembled as I turned over onto my stomach. Above me, I could hear Rykaia and Dolion pounding against the door.

“Branimir!” Rykaia’s muffled scream bled through the barrier, and I reached out for the sconce, lifting it into the air.

In the dark corner, something shifted. What little I could make of its shape told me it wasn’t a spider, though I felt like eyes were watching my every move from every corner of that small space. The putrid odor of rot and mold assaulted my nose, and I coughed and gagged, swallowing back the acids in my throat. I pushed onto my knees, trailing the flaming torch back and forth.

“Hello?”

A deep, guttural growl answered, and it was then I realized I’d made a grave mistake in opening that door.

Slowly, I backed myself away toward the ladder, but a tickle on the back of my calf brought me to a halt, and I slowly turned my head.

Looming over me were the largest set of fangs I’d ever seen, and above them, hundreds of beady eyes watching me.

I let out a scream and scampered away on all fours, dropping the sconce. “Somebody, help me!”

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