“She served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness.”
-The Lord of the Rings: Shelob’s Lair
It wasn’t until they had made it some distance around the edge of the facility that Helen and Hendricks felt safe enough to pause and reload their rifles. The noise of the battle had long since faded, though whether this meant that Charles or Boa had come out on top, they had no way of knowing.
“So, do you have any idea where we’re going?” Helen asked.
“Not really,” Hendricks admitted. “I guess I had some vague idea that if we could just get outside we could find our way to a boat.”
“Well, as far as I know the only boats on the island are at the main docks,” Helen nodded in the general direction they were facing. “Or that secret harbor under Prosser’s study.” She waved back the way they had come. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it’d be a good idea to head back that way.”
“Yeah, I agree,” said Hendricks with something like a laugh. “But wait; what about the Michelle?”
“Your yacht? That’s smashed up on the rocks,” she said.
“Yeah, but there must be a life-raft or something on it, right?”
“Maybe,” she said. “At least, assuming they didn’t unload it.”
“Well, let’s go find out,” he said. “We must be somewhere near the place, right?”
“I think so. I only saw it in my dream, you know, but I think it should be somewhere through…”
She looked about for a moment, then began to walk along a doubtful little path through the trees that were growing to their right. Hendricks followed, keeping his gun at the ready.
They had only followed the path for a few moments when they came through and saw a remarkable sight. The trees ended abruptly over a small cliff, which overlooked a shallow bay, the waters of which were full of big, jagged rocks. And right in the middle, stuck between two particularly large specimens, was the yacht.
“Oh, of course,” said Helen in disappointment. “You guys came ashore at low tide; it’s high tide now. That means we won’t be able to reach it.”
Hendricks, though, wasn’t so sure. He was looking very hard at the yacht, which was about a hundred yards out, and he noticed something…
“Come on,” he said, setting off around the edge of the cliff. Helen followed him, a little uncertainly, and not far from where they had stood he found what he was looking for.
“Here!” He said. There was a thick rope tied tightly around a tree and stretching taught all the way out to the Michelle.
“Okay, so how does that help us?” Helen asked. “You’re not suggesting that we try to climb down that thing?”
“Well, why not?”
“If you can, you’re welcome to try,” she said. “But as for me, I’m fairly positive I can’t.”
Hendricks reached up and felt the rope.
“You never know,” he said. “Might be easier than it looks…”
“You’ve never tried this sort thing before, have you?” she said.
“Not really. Why, have you?”
She nodded.
“And it’s not easier than it looks. At all.”
That put a damper on Hendricks’s enthusiasm for the idea. He was trying to think of other arguments, when he heard a rustling in the trees behind them. They whipped around, but thinking the same thing; Charles. Of course, he had killed the snake and now he was back after them. How could they have been so stupid as to wait around for so long?
They gripped their rifles as the rustling grew closer.
“Aim for his legs,” Hendricks muttered to her. “That might give us a chance to get away.”
Helen nodded, looking very pale and scared.
Then they saw him. But it wasn’t Charles at all.
“Dr. Kipling?” Helen exclaimed, lowering her rifle.
Dr. Kipling jumped and looked up. His expression was that of a man who has just received a cutting and completely undeserved personal insult and is too pained to respond.
“Y-you?” he said. “No, no, you-your not supposed supposed to be here. You’re sup-supposed to be dead. Yes, dead. You should be dead.”
“Well, we’re not,” said Hendricks. “What are you doing here?”
“I-I the island’s lost,” he said. “Lost, completely lost. Guards all dead. You-you should be d-dead. Island’s lost. Have to get-get off island…”
“That’s what we’re trying to do too!” said Helen. “Do you know how we can get to a boat?”
He stared at her as though he had never heard of such a thing.
“No, no, no you you’re supposed to be dead,” he said. “Island’s lost. Snake out. Other snake out. Spider out. Crocodile out. All out. Got-got-got to get to boat…”
He waddled passed them to the rope.
“Uh, doctor, I don’t think you can…” Hendricks began.
Kipling suddenly moved with alarming speed. He whipped off his neck tie, slung it over the rope, and the next thing they knew, he was riding it down like a zip-line.
Helen and Hendricks were too stunned by this new development to say anything for a while. They just watched Kipling slide down, land on the yacht, and vanish inside it.
“Well that was unexpected,” Hendricks said.
“I want to know where Prosser found him,” Helen commented.
“So, wait, does he expect to take the Michelle?”
“No!” Helen exclaimed, pointing. “Look! There was a life raft! And he’s taking it!”
A small, yellow, inflatable raft was indeed chugging away from the Michelle as they watched.
“That stuttering son-of-a…!” Helen shouted. “He’s taking our raft!”
“Great, there goes that idea,” Hendricks sighed. “Now what?”
“I guess the same plan as before,” Helen replied, still shaking her fist at the retreating Dr. Kipling. “Get down to the docks and hope there’s a boat, and it’s not being guarded.”
“How do we do that?”
“I guess first we have to go back inside,” she said, turning back to the forest. “The docks are only accessible from the facility; I remember they made that very clear during my orientation.”
And so, feeling crushed and disappointed, they turned their backs on the Michelle and headed back the way they had come.
“Uh, let’s not go this way,” Hendricks said suddenly. “You know, just in case.”
“Oh, right,” said Helen. “This way, then.”
They turned right and walked through the trees, keeping their guns ready and pausing every few minutes to listen. But all was quiet now. Hendricks wondered where Boa was; whether Charles had managed to kill her, or whether she was sleeping off a meal of guards somewhere.
Suddenly, Hendricks’s thoughts were interrupted when he jerked to a halt. His gun, which he had lowered for a moment to wipe his sweaty brow, had apparently gotten stuck in the undergrowth. He pulled at it, but it wouldn’t budge. He looked closer.
“Helen,” he said sternly. “Don’t move.”
“What is it?”
Hendricks pointed and she leaned over to look.
The barrel of his AK-47 was tangled up in a web. A web of thick, silky cords wound cleverly all through the bush. As they looked around, they saw, peaking out from every bush, fern, and low-hanging branch in their path was the same tangled webbing.
“Go back,” Hendricks whispered. “Very carefully. And don’t. Touch. Anything.”
Helen nodded and turned away, doing her best to avoid brushing against any of the undergrowth. Meanwhile, Hendricks tried fruitlessly to extract his gun, but only succeeded in getting it more tangled. He didn’t dare keep trying long. He unslung himself and left it, following Helen back through the trees.
It was all very quiet, except for their breathing, which was quick and shallow. Somewhere, he knew, in the trees or in the bushes just above or behind or beside them was the monster spider, Anansi. And having seen his traps, Hendricks suddenly had an idea of what Prosser had meant when he spoke of the spider’s uncanny intelligence. They had been saved by sheer dumb luck; another step and he, Hendricks, would have been tangled hopelessly in the web.
They reached the path that they had taken in. The moment they stepped onto it, they broke into a run, racing back to the facility. They reached the edge of the trees; the facility loomed overhead, and they almost felt glad at the sight.
Hendricks felt his leg catch on something, like a cord stretched across the path, lost his footing, and landed with a violent thud face-first. A shriek to his left told him that Helen had had a similar experience.
They turned over, Hendricks reaching for his sidearm, Helen bringing up her assault rifle. A dark shape loomed in the trees overhead. They couldn’t make out much of it, except for its many gleaming, red eyes.
Helen opened fire, yelling as she did so. The bullets sent leaves tumbling down form the tree top, and the eyes vanished. She kept firing, raking the trees, but they caught no more sight of the spider.
“Helen, stop!” Hendricks shouted. “You’re wasting ammo!”
She stopped, breathing very hard.
“Come on,” he said, rising to his feet and helping her up. “Quick! Back inside.”
They turned and ran, every so often casting glances over their shoulder, but they didn’t catch any further sign of Anansi.
Hendricks made for the nearest door, threw it open, and raced inside. This, they discovered after their eyes adjusted to the dim light, turned out to be a small, empty room. They closed the door behind them and leaned against it, breathing hard.
“Well,” said Helen. “We’re back. Inside.”
“At least it sounds like most of them are outside,” Hendricks said.
His radio crackled to life.
“This is Dr. Prosser,” came the familiar voice. “To anyone still alive outside the facility, retreat inside. Regroup at the central laboratory. I repeat; retreat immediately. Boa, Anansi, and Python have all broken out and are outside the building. It is possible that others have as well. Retreat to the central laboratory immediately.”
“There you go,” said Hendricks. “That ought to keep them off of us for a while.”
Helen nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Now I think we want to head right when we get out of here…”
Helen hefted her gun and led the way out of the room. Hendricks pulled out his sidearm and followed. The hallway outside was largely the same as the others, if perhaps a little better lit. They reached a junction and turned left (since to their right was nothing but an open elevator shaft), then right again at the next corner.
As they started down this hallway, the ceiling suddenly crashed inward in front of them. Hendricks had a confused impression of many eyes, six-inch fangs, a gleaming black body with endless waving legs, and a piercing hiss like water on a hot skillet. But before his mind could even form these impressions into the concrete “Anansi!” Helen had fired off two shots before her gun clicked dry (she hadn’t reloaded since their encounter in the trees). Both shots missed. Hendricks fired two wild shots before he seized Helen’s hand, turned, and started running back down the corridor.
The huge spider sprang after them with a great bound, scuttling along behind them. But just as they came to the corner by the open elevator shaft, Hendricks and Helen suddenly lost their footing. It was as though the floor had turned to ice. They fell and slid the rest of the way on the silken threads, straight out through the open door into the shaft, screaming as they fell.
They landed with a slight ‘twang’ on something very soft, but very strong. Helen’s assault rifle and Hendricks’s pistol both fell straight through, clattering on their way down. When Hendricks sat up, he felt the back of his shirt tear. One of his hands was stuck as well, and when he wrenched it up he yelled in pain as the skin on his palm ripped off.
It was dark, but he didn’t need to see it to realize what they had landed on. It was an enormous web; orderly, like the kind he had seen in the garden, but stretching all the way across the shaft.
Like ordinary webs, some of the strands were sticky and others were not. It was only by blind luck that he had largely avoided the sticky ones and so could move. But a glance to his right showed him that Helen hadn’t been so lucky.
She lay spread-eagle on the web, her mostly-bare arms stuck tight to the strands, as were her legs, torso, and even her face, which was turned towards him. She strained and pulled, but she couldn’t get any leverage to move. And he realized that, even if she could wrench herself free, as he had done with his now-bleeding hand, she would tear herself to shreds in the process.
Hendricks could see that Helen was realizing this too. Her face contorted in misery, and she began to sob as she strained fruitlessly against the web.
Meanwhile, far above them, Anansi had appeared over the edge of the shaft and begun to descend, walking slowly down the wall, making a noise that sounded eerily like high-pitched laughter.
Hendricks tried to hack at the web with the sharp end of his crowbar, but it was as hard as steel, and kept giving a little only to bounce right back again. He pressed the crowbar down on one of the strands and leaned all his weight upon it. The strand stretched further and further, and finally snapped with a noise like a bow string. Hendricks nearly fell down the shaft after it. But meanwhile Anansi was drawing ever closer, still laughing his hideous laugh.
“It’s not going to work,” said Helen. Tears were running down her face as she watched Anansi approach out of the corner of her eyes. “You’ve gotta leave me. P-please, Hendricks, just g-go. You can’t…”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said firmly. The spider was almost all the way down now.
“Please, Hendricks!” She said in a kind of half-sob, half-scream. “Go! I don’t want you to…”
She couldn’t bring herself to finish.
“Oh, God!” she gasped. “Please go…”
Hendricks didn’t leave. Instead he stood up, balancing as well as he could on the safe strands and brandished his crowbar. He hadn’t the slightest expectation that it would do any good, but he didn’t intend to let Helen die without a fight.
Besides, he thought. Where would I go, anyway?
As Anansi reached the web, Hendricks swung at his head, causing the spider to jerk back out of the way with a hiss.
At least that shut him up, Hendricks thought, struggling to keep his balance.
Anansi gathered himself up and sprang straight at Hendricks, landing full on top of him. Helen screamed, and Hendricks only saved himself from instant death by bracing the crowbar against Anansi’s head, keeping the twitching fangs away from his face. A putrid smell of decay filled his nostrils. He had a horrible view of the spider’s yawning, shapeless mouth and jointed underside, and he realized, as Anansi’s strength slowly overwhelmed his own and the deadly fangs came closer, that they would be the last things he would ever see…
Then, all at once, Anansi sprang back off of Hendricks, who had a couple seconds of utter confusion, wondering whether this was some new trick of the spiders, when he saw what had distracted him.
Another, and much deeper hiss was reverberating through the shaft. Boa was sliding down, her eyes fixed on Anansi, who was reared up on his hind legs, ready for battle.
Hendricks tried to get up to try one more desperate attempt to free Helen, but found he couldn’t. Anansi had pinned him to the web, and he was now almost as helpless as she was.
Her left hand lay just within reach of his right, so Hendricks did the only thing he thought he could do. He tucked the crowbar into his belt, reached out, and gripped her hand tightly.
Boa struck at Anansi, who sprang aside onto the wall and off onto her back. His fangs obviously couldn’t pierce her scales, but she didn’t like having him their nonetheless. She twisted around, bringing the whole of her huge body down the shaft and landing smack on the web. Strong as it was, it wasn’t built for her weight and the end with her on it (the opposite end from Helen and Hendricks) gave way almost immediately.
She and Anansi fell, but as they did her tail swept through the air and sliced most of the web away, passing within inches of Hendricks’s feet.
The spider and the snake fell, still hissing and snapping at each other, while Helen and Hendricks, still stuck on the single, ragged piece of web left, swung down, screaming, and slammed backwards against the wall. The impact was hard, but not as hard as it might have been, since the web bunched up a bit and cushioned them some. Nevertheless, they both saw stars popping before their eyes and felt livid bruises beginning on their backs.
So there they were; hanging by one or two threads like a couple of fish caught in a net, with no obvious means of escape.
“You alright?” Helen asked as soon as she could speak.
“Could be worse,” said Hendricks. “You?”
“Same. Where the heck did she come from? I thought she was still outside.”
“Maybe she followed her food in,” Hendricks suggested. “Anyway, I’m not complaining.”
“Me ‘neither. Any ideas of how we get out of here?”
Hendricks looked around. To his relief, he found he could now move, or at least, to some extent. The web, having lost most of its tension, still clung to them, but they had some freedom of movement within it. Even better, he saw that they weren’t actually very far above another elevator door. If they could reach it, they could pry it open and be on their way.
Of course, the problem was that, stuck as they were, there was no obvious way they could get down there. They couldn’t even fall in their present condition.
“Do you think, if we could cut those two threads,” said Helen, who had seen the door as well. “We could catch the ledge on the way down?”
Hendricks gave her a disbelieving look.
“No,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, looking a little sheepish. “Me neither.” She looked down the shaft, from which angry hissing and smacking sounds continued to reverberate.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked, sounding a little panicked, and Hendricks knew she wondered whether Anansi might start crawling back up the shaft any minute.
Hendricks looked down at the doors and up at the remains of the web enveloping them, thinking hard.
“If only we had some way of cutting it,” he said.
“What about the crowbar?”
“That’d take too long,” he said. “And I don’t even know whether it could cut this stuff now that it’s all loose like this.”
Below them, the sounds of battle had ceased. Either that meant that Anansi had been killed or else…he was coming back up.
As Hendricks examined the web above him, he noticed something that he hadn’t before. They were attached to the wall of the shaft by two strong threads. But the two threads were fairly well spaced apart, and were arranged in such a way that they were holding them more or less flat against the wall. If they could cut one of those threads, it might loosen the web enough for one of them to turn over...
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Hold on…”
He started climbing one of the non-sticky strands. This proved more difficult than he had imagined, since he had to lift Helen along with his own weight. He would never have managed it if Helen, grasping what he was doing, hadn’t starting mimicking him and climbing a parallel thread.
Once high enough, Hendricks extracted his crowbar, which took some doing as it was now wrapped in the terrible, sticky threads and he had to tear his shirt and pants pretty badly to get it out. He hacked at the thread, once, twice…
On the third blow it very suddenly and unexpectedly gave way and Helen and Hendricks fell with cries of surprise, only to be brought up painfully short by the last remaining thread.
But this was too much for it to bear. It held for maybe a second before snapping in its turn, and Helen and Hendricks both screamed as they fell.
Clawing desperately, Hendricks and Helen both snagged the ledge just below the doors. They would never have been able to hold on normally, but the sticking threads that now entwined their hands gripped the ledge more securely than their own hands would ever have managed.
“See,” Helen gasped, breathing very fast. “I told you…that would work…”
Hendricks braced his feet against the shaft wall as best as he could, jammed the crowbar (which was now stuck securely to his hand) between the elevator doors and pushed. They slid slowly apart, and as soon as there was space he thrust his hand, crowbar and all, between them. The slid shut rather painfully on his arm, but that was what he had counted on. Using this for leverage, he pulled himself up onto the ledge, Helen scrambling up as well (they were still bound together by the web, which led to a frightening moment where she slipped and would have pulled him off if his hand hadn’t been held by the elevator doors). Once they were both standing on the ledge, they began to pry the doors open.
Just as they had almost gotten them far enough apart, however, Helen happened to glance down the shaft one more time and screamed. Exactly as she had feared, Anansi was scurrying up the wall towards them, hissing angrily.
They squeezed through the doors, which slid shut behind them. They tried to run, but soon found that they couldn’t get on very well. The web was still wrapped about them, binding them to each other and forcing them to move in synch, as though they were in a three legged race. They stumbled and staggered along as fast as they could, but neither suspected that the elevator doors would hold Anansi for long. Indeed, they had hardly gone more than a hundred feet down the corridor when they saw his long, black legs sliding out from between the doors and prying them open like a sea star with a clam.
Helen and Hendricks kept going, searching this way and that for somewhere to hide. Around corner there was a bathroom. This seemed the best they could hope for, so Hendricks pulled the door open, slipped in, and closed it as quietly as possible. They ran to one of the stalls, clambered up on top of the toilet, and crouched there, bracing themselves against the walls and hardly daring to breathe.
At first, Hendricks was sure it hadn’t worked. He heard the distinctive ‘click-clack’ of Anansi’s legs on the floor and knew he was getting close to the bathroom. He gripped the crowbar very tightly. Helen shut her eyes and gritted her teeth.
Anansi was at the door. He was examining it. They could hear his legs and feelers scraping over the door and walls…Then the creek as the door began to slide open…
And then, all at once, Anansi seemed to change his mind. The door closed and they heard him scurrying off down the hall. But they heard no other sound.
They waited there for a very long time without hearing anything. Anansi did not come back, and from the noise he had made they felt sure he wasn’t laying in wait for them. Still, neither felt particularly inclined to risk it.
Nevertheless, after waiting for quite a while in silence, they slowly began to relax. They unfolded themselves from their very cramped and uncomfortable hiding positions and stepped out of the stall. The bathroom was still empty.
“What do you think?” Helen whispered.
“I don’t know,” said Hendricks. “He’s obviously not in here, but I’d feel a lot better if I knew what made him back off.”
Neither moved. All was silent.
“Can we try to get this stuff off?” Helen asked.
They went over to the sink, but no amount of washing seemed to make any difference to the webbing, which was still stuck to their flesh and clothing as though it were part of them. And now that they had time to actually pay attention to such things, they found that it came with a very unpleasant pinching sensation.
Meanwhile, Hendricks’s left hand was still bleeding, so they washed it and Helen bandaged it up with a strip torn from the bathroom towel.
“You know,” she said, as she wrapped the bandage over his cut. “This is probably going to sound really ungrateful, but you should have just run for it.”
“I told you, I’m not going to leave you,” he said. “Besides, where would I have gone?”
“Good point,” she said, tying it off tight. But she didn’t take her hands away. She kept holding his in hers.
“But, look, Hendricks,” she said, sounding very serious. “I really don’t want you to die just for my sake.”
“Well,” said Hendricks, feeling very uncomfortable. “When it comes to that, I’d rather not either.”
She didn’t smile.
“I’m being serious,” she said. “Promise me that if there’s ever a time where you have a chance to escape and I don’t, that you won’t throw your life away for no reason.”
Hendricks looked at her, and she looked right back at him. She was still holding his hand in hers, and he could feel her trembling slightly…or was that him?
“I’m not going to…”
“Please, Hendricks,” she said firmly. “If I have to die, I’d rather die knowing that at least you still had a chance. So, if you can’t do anything else for me, at least give me that, okay?”
Hendricks didn’t want to agree. He didn’t know how he could possibly agree to that. But the look she gave him was so tender, so desperate, that he found himself saying “Okay.”
Helen let go of his hand.
“Thank you,” she said.
There was a tense silence.
“Should we go see if the coast is clear?” Hendricks asked.
“I’m not in a hurry,” said Helen. “Something made Anansi back off, and I don’t think I’d like to run into it.”
“Well, we don’t know that,” said Hendricks. “He might have just given up on his own accord.”
Helen gave him a disbelieving look.
“It’s possible,” he shrugged apologetically.
Helen was on the point of laughing when she stopped dead, her face stricken. The door was opening.
“Oh,” said Ulla Orlich. “It’s you.”
Next Week:
Chapter Seventeen: Entanglement
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