Halloween Story: Arachnids

Arachnids

I was sound asleep in my cozy, warm sleeping bag, when my eyes flew open in terror. 

“What was that sound?!” my mind shrieked inside my head.

I lay there, frozen with fear.  The tent was dark and still.  It was supposed to be; stillness and peace were why I was camping alone, deep in the woods, on this cold October night.  I didn’t want to face the hordes of costumed trick-or-treaters this year.  I wanted to be alone.

Alone suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea. On my face, a large, fuzzy mass sat heavily over my right eye.  I could feel the sharp ends of its eight hairy legs on my cheek and forehead.  I swallowed, and quickly shut the eye.

A tarantula!

The thought was more image than words as realization of my predicament flooded through me.  I didn’t dare to move, for fear the monstrous arachnid would bite my face.  At the same time, everything deep and primal in my being wanted it off me.  Now!

I broke out in a cold sweat.  The thing just sat there.  I was afraid to wriggle my arms up out of the sleeping bag to grab it, or brush it away. 

Rustle, rustle, rustle….

The sound was of something moving over the layer of fall leaves outside the tent.

“What now?” my terrified mind wailed through the static of my fear.

From the corner of my open left eye saw movement outside the tent: shadowy silhouettes cast by the bright moon shining above the clearing where I had pitched my little tent.

Scritch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

It wasn’t outside the tent, it was on the tent! 

My left eye turned as far as it could without moving my head.  I was horribly aware of the furry weight on my face.  Through the stretched white canvas of the wedge tent’s sloping wall, I saw my worst nightmare.  Dozens – hundreds, even thousands! – of spiders were swarming up the outside of the tent.  My ears told me they were covering the other tent wall, at the same time.

I felt the bile rise in my throat as I realized that this old-fashioned canvas tent, the smallest of those we used for historical reenactment events, was only loosely tied shut at the front, and the edges all around were protected only by the up-turned edges of the canvas ground sheet beneath my sleeping bag.  There were no modern zippers to keep the spiders outside the tent!

The skittering sound grew deafening in the silence of the woods.  It was inside the tent now, as well as outside it.  I lay helpless in my sleeping bag as I felt thousands of legs crawl up onto my motionless form.  So far, I felt none inside the sleeping bag, but I expected to feel tiny legs any moment.

Scritch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

I kept my right eye tightly shut as my left eye rolled around as far as it could.  The darkness inside the tent was even deeper, with thousands of spider bodies blocking the light of the moon through the canvas.

My arms and legs were covered with goosebumps.  I was soaked with cold perspiration, despite the chilly night.  Tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t move to wipe them away.  I wasn’t being careful by not moving; I truly couldn’t move my arms or legs from the terror of my situation.  My mouth was too dry to make a sound, even if I had dared to open my mouth to scream.  My throat constricted, making me struggle even to breathe.  I bit the end of my tongue between my front teeth, and compressed my lips, to keep from opening my mouth to gulp down more air.  I feared admitting spiders between my lips if I opened my mouth.

I regretted now that I had felt so relaxed and confident in my solitude that evening.  After cooking the piece of cod and the diced potatoes over the cheerful campfire, in the small skillet I had brought with me – the frozen fish had thawed perfectly during my hike, and had still been cool when I had unwrapped it – I had enjoyed my fish hash in the peaceful silence of the autumn evening.  I had been warmly dressed, with a denim jacket over a thick, dark green sweatshirt, which proclaimed “Fort Michilimackinac.”  After dinner, I had scraped out the little skillet, put out the fire with the bottled water I used to rinse the last of the fish and potatoes from the seasoned cast iron, and got ready for bed.  All alone in my campsite, I had removed every stitch of clothing before creeping into my sleeping bag, folding everything into a neat pile near my feet.  I hated wearing clothes to sleep, because they always got twisted and tangled when I turned over, as I invariably did.

Now, I lay flat on my back, cocooned in my sleeping bag right up to my ears and chin, with nothing but the quilted bag between me and thousands of climbing, crawling, hairy arachnids, with no help within hearing, even if I did manage to scream.

Scritch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

“Don’t crawl into the bag,” my mind silently whimpered, cringing inside my paralyzed body.

Scritch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

I tried to swallow – a reflex, with so saliva left in my cotton-dry mouth – but my throat constricted too tightly, and I felt a painful knot just behind that soft hollow at the base of my throat.

I felt the tickle as the first, tiny spider dropped over the edge of the sleeping bag onto my bare shoulder.  Every nerve ending in my body seemed to scream with the intensity of my fear.  A second later, another crawled over my hair, onto my ear.  More followed, hundreds of crawling legs moving over my bare skin.  I willed my arms to thrash, and my legs to kick, despite the confines of the sleeping bag, but I was beyond movement.  My limbs wouldn’t obey.

I lay there, trying to thrash, trying to kick, trying to scream.  I was motionless, and silent, covered from head to toe by tiny, creeping, crawling monsters.  Only my right eye was free of the tiny creatures, as the monstrous, hairy tarantula lay heavily there, its horrible, hairy legs twitching from time to time to dislodge smaller monsters that encroached on its self-defined space on the right side of my face. 

I choked on the vomit that couldn’t come up past the knot in my throat.  My face streamed with silent tears that poured from my open left eye, and seeped from beneath the lid of my tightly scrunched-closed right eye.

Thud!

My eyes flew open as my body landed on the canvas ground cloth of the large, canvas wall tent, between the two cots.  My arms and legs flailed wildly, frantically brushing non-existent spiders from my body.  My throat opened, and the long-repressed screams rent the dark silence.

“Babe?” my husband asked blearily from one of the cots.  “Babe, are you okay?  Wake up!  Wake up!  It’s just a dream!”

“Spiders!” I gasped just before wakefulness finally asserted itself, and I was able to understand that I was safe.

“No spiders,” he said calmly.  “Just a dream.”

“Just a dream,” I echoed, not quite believing him.

He helped me climb back onto my cot.  I zipped up the sleeping bag against the chilly October night.  I was camping, but I wasn’t alone.  My husband was beside me, keeping me safe.

I didn’t see him squash the huge, black, hairy tarantula with his heavy, leather boot later that night.  I was asleep.  But I saw the eight long, hairy legs when he was cleaning it off the canvas ground cloth in the thin morning light of the first morning of November.

I shuddered, and pretended I was still asleep until he got rid of the creature’s smooshed and flattened remains.  I hated nightmares.  I hated spiders more.  That was a horribly big spider.  Tarantula.  Arachnid.  Ugh!