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Spindling, tangled vines thin as a thread caressed Alex’s hair as he walked through the overgrowth. Gnarled branches clawed at his clothes, snagging his jacket. Half the forest tugged him forward while the rest pushed him back. What had once been a well-worn dirt path was swallowed by foliage.
At the end of the path was a house choked by ivy. The damp, rotting wood was splattered with only a few molded pink paint chips to show it had ever been anything but grime. The few windows that remained were fractured in patterns like a spider web.
Alex stepped up to the porch. The wood creaked and groaned under his feet. He ran his hand over the door, it was damp under his palm. When he pulled his hand back a single spider crawled between his fingers. Alex smiled.
Aligned to the slaughter would make most people think he’d relish in squashing the little black insect as it explored his hand, but Alex was no sadist. He didn’t relish purposeless death. He fondly remembered the cows on his parent's farm, those deep brown, docile eyes that watched him while he grazed. He never laid a finger on the animals, aside from occasionally stroking their flanks.
Alex held his hand to the doorframe and waited patiently for the spider to crawl away. Then he pushed the door open. A beam of moonlight swept over the floor. Thousands more spiders fled from the light into the dark crevices of the decaying home. They were small, minuscule even, frightful creatures that had lived more in the mortal plane than the other world they hailed from. Every surface was covered in dusty webs. Some of the bolder spiders started climbing Alex’s leg but he ignored them as he continued deeper into the house.
The further in he went the narrower the spaces seemed, the more labyrinthian the path became. The spiders hiding in the corners grew bigger, the webs more imposing, and the prey within them larger too until he was certain the lumps of soft white had once been human. An invisible thread led Alex through the space, guiding him deeper and deeper to where the mother of all these awful things lived.
Alex couldn’t wait to meet - and kill - her.
As he walked he started to hear noises. The thread tugged him down a different path but he couldn’t help but turn towards the noise. It sounded like a person’s breath. He imagined one of the web’s victims smothered in web fibers, struggling to breath. He remembered his fathers’ words when the madman came to their farm and brought with him that awful, screeching music. It’s better to put them down then let them suffer, he hadn’t been talking about the madman but Alex took his words to heart.
But Alex didn’t find a struggling victim. As he rounded the corridor he saw a man standing in the center of the hall, arms hanging limply at his sides. Corpses of large spiders littered the halls behind him. Webs clung to his hair and clothes, painting his body in strands of white, evidently, the spiders hadn’t gone down without a fight. His clothes were torn and tattered. His eyes were deep and dark and brown just like the cows on the farm. But cows were large and imposing - the tattered man was frail and trembling. He was a sheep waiting for slaughter.
“I don’t wanna hurt you!” the tattered man said as he backed away.
Of course he didn’t. Yet he’d found himself in the depths of the web and there was no escape by natural means. He would wander the corridors forever, until he was too tired to fight the spiders any longer.
Alex raised his knife. It’s better to put them down then let them suffer.
The tattered man saw the weapon. A strange look crossed his face. He lunged.
Alex hadn’t even seen the broken shard of glass clutched in his hand. A stinging pain ripped across Alex’s arm. His sleeve wielding the knife was sliced clean through, a thin trail of blood barely visible underneath. Alex pushed back his sleeve and admired the cut. It was shallow but if he’d been a normal person he would have dropped the knife.
As soon as the blow was dealt the man retreated again, backing away, blood dripping from the glass.
“I don’t want to fight you,” the tattered man said. Fear wafted off him, billowing in plumes like smoke from a bonfire. It was suffocating. Still he held the glass raised, shoulders stiff.
“You’re fun,” said Alex. “Come with me. I will protect you.” My vicious sheep, he thought.
The tattered man stood there, eyes dark and deep. Not like a cow, not like a sheep. Like a bottomless well, like the fathomless extent of the night, like the ink that dyed and stained and never could be washed away.
“Okay,” said the tattered man.