Down Here With The Spiders

By: MJ Slick
September 11, 2008

I heard a story when I was young about a man in town who lured children into his house by offering them candy then turned them into spiders.

There was no way to obviate the metamorphosis once the children ate the nuggets of taffy; chewing the stringy treat induced convulsions as bone marrow genetically mutated, so it was told.

It was one of those urban rumors that I supposed was created to spook little kids. And while I didn’t really believe the yarns, there was an unusually large number of either runaway or missing kids in the town I grew up in; Botts Landing, New Jersey.

I first heard of the tale from Grammy Rose, my paternal grandmother, when we were coming out of church one day and spotted the man searching through garbage cans across the street. The tale was then told to me beside a campfire when I was at Boy Scout Camp in Lake Gullard; then, I heard it in college while a joint was being passed around at a Halloween party.

Oddly enough, I heard something about the creepy man just yesterday from Mr. Postelwaite, who owns the market while I was ordering some food for the repast. He remembered me right away.

“Your that kid who became a millionaire with those gadgets.”

“Yes.” I said. I invented a compact household vacuum that cleans with ultraviolet light.

“Did you hear Mr. Lockery died.” Mr. Postelwaite asked me. “Found him dead in his front yard.”

“Who?” I asked. I had been living in California and returned to sell off my Grammy Rose’s house and her belongings after she died.

Over the years I’d fly Grammy Rose out for the holidays. I dreaded coming back to these parts. I so wanted to make this quick. Once I left Botts Landing, I never wanted to come back here. That was a vow, mind you.

After offering his sympathies, Mr. Postelwaite said; “The guy with the Spider Taffy died. And you want to know something..." He paused and continued in a whisper. "There hasn’t been a new sign in the window since then.”

The sign he was referring to was a white piece of paper with a child’s picture on it and the words: Missing.

There were always two or three, if not more, by the gumball machines beyond the glass automatic doors. A heavy girl in her tap dancing uniform. A skinny boy in his little league outfit. Sad. Very sad.

Once the funeral was over, I hired a realtor to work with me to sell my Grammy’s house and possibly find one or two others that I could roll over quickly. I had some extra money to invest but I didn’t want to make a monumental case of this. I had a week. After that, it was back to Cali. If I could make some money while I was back in town then great otherwise I was out of there!

We looked at two houses, both of which needed an excessive amount of work to turn a profit. As we pulled up the driveway of the third, the paint-flecked house with it’s unkempt yard it was very recognizable.

“This is that house,” I said remembering the shutters and latticework around the front porch. “329 Euclid. This is where that creepy old man lived.”

“Creepy old man?” Asked Vera, a middle-aged realtor whose strawberry-scented car we were driving in. “Mr. Lockery? Is that who you’re talking about?”

“Lockery right.” I told her that I only dabble in real estate and asked her if she’d ever been to California.

Now, I was flirting a bit I admit but darn it, she was pretty attractive and slightly overweight so I thought I might have a decent shot at taking her on a date. I’m not the most glamorous-looking guy and I figured she didn’t look too bad even with that gut, so I said; “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

She showed me her wedding ring.

“Can’t you tell I’m pregnant?” She quipped.

“Yeah. I... congratulations.” I was dreadfully embarrassed.

We walked into the house and Vera got quite embarrassed herself.

This place was incredibly dusty. My LightWash room cleaner, which retails at $465.00 would make this place shine I boasted.

“It’s a pretty large dinning room.” She said.

I wasn’t impressed at all.

“So this is the creepy house in all those tales.” I said aloud realizing the bathroom was very small and could use a remodel. “It’s really... I guess the word is disgusting in here. It smells bad too. I‘d have a lot of work to do to get this place in order.”

Mr. Lockery, I thought I should mention had been questioned a number of times over the years by police officers, and this very house was searched a good number of times as well. They never found anything. I had presumed the hermetic old man merely valued his privacy.

“Shall we have a look upstairs at the bedroom.” Said Vera as she applied a spritz of perfume. “There’s three bedrooms, a master bath and a office. Plus a full attic.”

“What’s in here?” I said opening a door.

“Basement.” Vera said.

I was startled when an anomalous, distended spider emerged from the darkness and click-ity-clacked across the floor.

I reflexively squashed it under my shoe. My stomp made a loud clack of it’s own on the hardwood floor.

I felt a suction under my foot as I slowly lifted it.

“Damn that was big.” I said looking at the blotch of blood, legs and arachnid parts on the bottom of my shoe. “Did you see it Vera?”

When I turned, she didn’t look to well. Vera’s skin was pale - a sickly white. She was standing in a puddle of blood. There was blood all over the front of her skirt.

Her mouth fell open and she spoke in daze: “I think I just had a miscarriage.”

She placed one hand on the wall, steadied herself then dashed into the bathroom closing the door behind her.

I could hear her throwing up.

“What have I done?” I asked myself riveted by solemnity.

My face must have been imprinted with fear and the capitalist ethos I’d been chasing scattered to dust.

A current of insanity ripped through my body inoculating my muscles. I fell to my knees. These tales were real.

There before me was a dusty candy-bowl of individually-wrapped pieces of taffy.

Horror flung itself into my mind.

“I’ll take it.” I shouted.

I wound up buying the house. I couldn’t let anyone come in to fumigate, or dust for that matter. Not with all these precious little things crawling around.