At the moment, every second of freedom from the hairy touch of those spindly-legged monstrosities was a blessing.
Soon there was nothing else he could use to form an obstacle between himself and the spirit-analogues of Pertos, Jenny, Rudi and Ben (as he imagined the spiders were). He stood at the back of the main room, his spine pressed against the wall, watching the arachnids swarming at the corners of the glass, hunting cracks and crevices.
What would they do to him if they got him?
Make him die? Take him to some place where there were no windows, where he would be chained and tortured and punished for being such a stupid boy? Would they torture Bitty Belina and make him watch that spectacle while he was also confined in manacles?
A truly terrifying notion: did they already have Bitty Belina and were they already torturing her?
On the top of a display rack, by the front door, a spider appeared. It was silhouetted against the lighted window. Though he could not tell the head from the behind, he felt that it was watching him, gauging him for the final attack.
Somehow, it had gotten through the storefront, the scout for the main pack, and it signaled his defeat by its very presence.
He was perspiring. His throat was dry. He wished he were a boy again, at home in the woods, looking for centipedes under the rocks. Swimming in the hole in the creek. Hunting berries. Playing with jenny ….
He choked, pushed away from the wall.
The spider was still watching him.
He hurried into the storeroom and shut the heavy door behind. It made a tight seal on all sides. He did not see how they could possibly follow him in here.
They didn’t. They came from behind.
He was watching the door for signs of activity on the other side, almost as if he expected the spiders to force the panel inward, to tear it from its hinges. Something scurried by his left foot, inches away, dark against the light gray concrete. It reached the wall and ran along it toward the far corner. A spider. Brown. Thumb-sized.
When he turned, there were more of them, spilling out of a duct in the wall.
“No, no, no, no,” he chanted. He was no longer attempting to dissuade them from their attack. He was, instead, trying to force a change in the fabric of reality itself. He wanted to unmake the spiders, to uncreate them as he had uncreated puppets in the past.
The spiders had not, for the most part, crossed the floor in his direction. Except for the one that had run past his foot, they clung to the baseboard, looking for shelter. They were not nearly as aggressive as the ones in the corridor had been, for they were not driven by the deadly fumes of insecticide behind them.
Sebastian did not notice this difference, however. As far as he was concerned, the spiders had come around behind him and where there had once been a modicum of safety there was now only danger. He bolted across the room to a door that gave on a small office only large enough for one desk. He closed the door behind. It did not fit tight and would not keep the spiders out. Quickly, he crossed the room, knocking things over in his haste. He entered the half-bath attached to the office, closed and bolted that door.
He imagined he could hear spiders pouring into the office, thumping toward the wooden washroom door.
He examined the bathroom several times before he realized the ventilation grill, if pried loose, concealed a duct quite large enough to admit him if he crawled. Frantic, he hooked fingers through the heavy wire mesh and strained every muscle fiber in his thick biceps. The screen creaked, ripped loose with such suddenness that he fell with it in his hands.
Hurryl he thought. Jenny and Pertos and Ruth and Ben are coming to take you to the room without windows l
It was dark in the shaft. There might be spiders lurking about. He decided to risk that, for he knew there were spiders behind.