Rennold tried to keep low as he walked among the fields of grass, grateful for the dense cloud cover, hoping there were enough shadows and a strong gust of wind to make all the blades shift and twitch. He gripped the butcher knife tightly in his hand, trying to keep panicked sweat from loosening his grip. Movement flashed around him in the dark and he tried to stay focused on the house ahead, ignoring the feeling of insects flying across his skin.
As he reached Alysia Field's estate, the green glow emanated from the windows, diluted some by the curtains. Rennold peered through the slit in front of one of the cracked windows. Glowworms swarmed in the hundreds, their luminescent bodies enough to cast shadows across the floor. The glowworms fluttered and buzzed above, but he saw no movement in the room.
Rennold tried to shove courage into his chest and slowly pushed the window open. He pulled himself through and landed on the floor with surprising grace, pushing the window back down to the height he had found it. He looked around the room, green light shining on the walls and ceiling, a fireplace against one of the walls with orange coals. A few of the fireplace tools were embedded into the coals, sitting still while the ends of the metal glowed searing hot.
Rennold waited and listened, hearing nothing, and began to move through the estate. It was filled with glowworms, but he spotted no other movement. He was concluding that Alysia was not at home, and he began opening doors in search of Norman or anything that could lead him to him. He went to the kitchen and opened a pantry filled with webs and dead insects, a closet with cleaning supplies and dishrags stained with red.
Rennold was approaching the door by the staircase when he heard sounds coming from behind it. He ran into the drawing room. The door opened and Rennold poked his head around the corner and watched a massive black spider crawled out the door. Long legs thumped against the floor, dragging a body cocooned in spiderwebs. The body begin to twitch and the spider used its massive legs to prod at the body, jabbing at it forcefully until the movement stopped. It continued dragging the body, turning towards the stairs and Rennold hid against the wall of the drawing room and tried to stay as quiet as possible. He heard its feet thump into the kitchen and Rennold held his breath. He gripped the knife with white knuckles and tried to stop his body from shaking.
He closed his eyes tight and prayed that the corpse being dragged into the kitchen was not his dear friend. He heard the spider's legs again as it crawl up the stairs. Rennold emerged from the drawing room and stepped carefully past the staircase, towards the door by the staircase that now sat ajar. He held his breath again as he descended the wooden steps behind it.
The basement had far fewer glowworms than the upstairs, but there was enough to cast a soft light across the horrors of Alysia Field's basement. He felt foolish to think that the spiderwebs upstairs were excessive. Almost none of the walls were visible, nor was much of the floor, silver webs stretching and layered, dense like cotton, and dangling from the ceiling were several cocooned bodies.
Though Rennold's heart went out to all the poor souls trapped in this hell, he feared he could not save everyone, and he had come there for one person who he would not leave without. Out of the 6 cocoons he picked the one that best matched Norman's short height. The body hung beneath dense webs that immediately clung to Rennold as he tried to move through them. He could not help tugging at the silk, creating vibrations across the webs, and he knew he needed to hurry.
Rennold was coated in sticky silver strands when he reached up and grabbed the cocoon, yanking it down, and pulling away from the webbing that wrapped over the head. When he broke through to the face he nearly cried out in joy as he recognized Norman's cold face. His eyes were closed, and Rennold put a hand on the young man's cheek, giving it a gentle slap.
"Norman," Rennold said in a hushed voice, tapping him on the cheeks. Suddenly Norman's eyes shot open, taking in a large breath, and looked at Rennold with confusion and horror.
"Lord Roger? Where are we?" He began to panic. "What's going on?"
"You need to give up the bachelor scene, my friend," said Rennold as he tried to pull off the webs wrapping around Norman's torso and legs.
Rennold tried to calm him as he struggled to get out of the mess, terror smeared across his face as he observed his surroundings.
"Is this hell?" he looked at Rennold, body shaking as he tried to get to his feet. Rennold was about to laugh when someone else answered:
"You will certainly hope you were in hell."
Rennold turned with Norman's arm over his shoulder and saw Alysia standing at the bottom of the stairs. She wore a silk black robe, black hair running loose down her slim back. Her pale skin looked slimy in the green glow of the glowworms.
"I'm taking him out of here," Rennold said, staring into Alysia's black insect eyes.
Alysia smiled. "It's too bad you had to get involved, Roger. I liked you and your wife is a sweetheart. I was going to leave you be, honest, but now you've stuck your nose where it does not belong, and you will have to pay for that."
She smiled as a massive crack broke through the front of her face, forehead opened to red slime oozing across her face as it began to shape abnormally, distorting her human features. Her teeth melted away and more black eyes began to form. Her back snapped like her spine had been broken and 8 thick legs sprouted from her body, a monstrous spider crawling from the disguise.
Norman backed away, gripping Rennold's shoulder. Rennold dropped Norman and pulled the knife from his coat pocket as the spider ran toward them. It stopped and swiped its legs at him while he swung at the jabbing legs. He swiped the blade through the air in rash motions, getting lucky, and sliced through one of the legs. The spider shrieked as it retreated its legs and Rennold lunged towards the spider and tried to stab the blade through its head. He missed and jabbed it in the sternum, the spider releasing another shriek before it took hold of Rennold's arm with its fangs, ripping through the flesh and snapping the bone. He howled in pain and fell to the ground, blood pooling onto the ground, while the spider went for Norman, who had finally gotten to his feet and was trying to keep from getting snared in the sticky webbing.
Norman jumped to the side as the spider lunged at him, grabbing the knife stuck in its sternum. It tried to grip him with its fangs and he jumped atop the body and drove the knife into one of its eyes. The spider revolted and flailed in pain, tossing Norman from the body. Rennold tried to get to his feet while the creature backed away, giving them an opening to the staircase. Norman took Rennold's good arm and pulled him to his feet, and the men stumbled up the staircase.
Once at the top of the staircase, Norman slammed the door shut as the spider came crawling up the staircase. Rennold tried to hold the door shut while Norman grabbed a chair from the drawing room and jammed it under the handle.
"Where do we go?" Norman asked.
"I came in through a window," panted Rennold as he tried to ignore the searing pain in his arm.
"Screw that, we're going through a door," said Norman as he hurried Rennold down the hall, looking for a front or back entrance that would be easier to get through.
There was a screech from behind the basement door and before the men could make it to the end of the hall the glowworms suddenly all turned and swarmed the two men, flying into their ears and hair, keeping them blind and swatting while the spider knocked down the basement door.
"This way!" Rennold shouted as he grabbed Norman by the hand and led him to the room where he had entered through the window. They continued to swat at the bugs as they tried to fly into their mouths, Rennold trying to usher Norman where he thought the window was.
There was another monstrous shriek and all the glowworms ceased their swarming, retreating to the ceiling to give way to the spider that came rushing at them.
Rennold did not go for the window, but instead went to the dimly lit fireplace and grabbed a poker from the coals, which spilled onto the rug and began to heat the surface. Rennold turned to face the spider as it lunged at him, one of its eyes deformed and gushing, and Rennold kept his gaze with those eyes as he shouted and drew the searing poker into its face. The creature flail its massive legs and wriggled its body as the inside of its head began to burn.
"Get out of here!" Rennold shouted to Norman, but the young man ran to him and grabbed the base of the fireplace tool holder and swung the metal down on the spider's head as it was giving its last attempts to snatch at Rennold. After a second blow, the movement of the spider ceased and suddenly all the glowworms dropped dead to the floor.
The coals on the rug continued to heat and flames began to lick up from the surface, the fire growing quickly as it began to lick at the walls and surrounding furniture. Norman helped Rennold as they moved away from the spider, shoes crunching under the dead bugs. They fell through the window and with the last of their adrenaline ran from the estate, flames growing and beginning to consume everything around it.