Spiders
by
Troy McCombs
Copyright 2013 by Troy McCombs
(slightly updated)
Rachel's loud, piercing, incessant scream filled the house.
Josh, her father, dropped a moving box on his foot—if the box were any heavier the bones in his foot would have surely broke—and took off running through the hallway, up the stairs, around the landing at the top, and into the kids' new bedroom. His five-year-old daughter spun in circles and smacked herself, her scream keeping on. Is she having a seizure? Josh thought. Is she dying? Why was the poor girl freaking out?
Then he saw what had her in such distress: a bug crawling diligently on her arm. Nothing serious at all. Her shriek died out once she swatted the insect away, knocking it behind the bed. Now came the tears, her post-tramatic shock.
"You okay?" Josh sneered. It was always amusing for him to see his children freak out over such trivial matters. Last year he'd placed a rubber snake in his son's dresser drawer. When his boy opened it, he screamed at decibels higher than a Metallica concert.
Rachel was too upset to respond. The girl just stared at him, tears streaming, her delicate, sorrowful features pronounced by the bright daylight shining in through the three windows. The daylight also brought out the color in her cyber pink outfit—to an almost eye-damaging degree.
"You do know that it's more scared of you than you are of it, don't you?" His sneer kept on.
Footfalls... fast, hard, approaching, closing in. The whole house shook. "What's wrong? What's wrong?" Steve shouted as he burst into the room.
"Oh, your sister just had the willies after a daddy-long-leg crawled on her."
"It wasn't a daddy-long-leg!” she pouted. "It was a weird-colored spidey!"
Steve, an 11-year-old boy with long wavy hair and big braces on his small teeth, laughed. "You're just a wimp." His black T-shirt pronounced in ragged white letters: NO FEAR.
"Daddy, tell him to stop calling me names!"
"Wimp wimp wimp!"
"Knock it off, Steve.
“It's just a new house, Rach. Nobody's lived here for quite some time. It's going to have some bugs."
"Yeah!” Steve said. In his creepy voice: “And they were here first. To eaaaat girls named Rachel!”
The girl ran after her brother, who bolted back out of the room and down the stairs. Josh stopped her before she could catch up.
"Let it go, he's just being a brat.”
"My arm hurts. Burns! Itchy.”
Josh examined her forearm. His eyes widened and his head pulled in close. The girl had been bitten by the bug. The wound was severe, bruised, swollen, and pulsating in and out like a beating heart. No, no daddy-long-leg left this kind of mark behind. No spider with which he was familiar.
"Christ. Honey, I think I better take you to the emergency room."
"Where's mom? I want mom!"
“She's at the store. Come on, we should go."
“I waaaaant moooooom!” her shrilling shout stung the lining of his eardrums. Josh knew he was obviously no substitute for Mary—supermom, darling wife. Dad's were always second in command in times of need. Maybe third. Grandma's were probably second.
He pulled her out of the room, around the landing, and down the creaky wooden steps which were very dusty and probably needed to be replaced. Steve stood at the bottom of the staircase, smacking the newel. “She's still crying?” he asked, his braces reflecting a wink of sunlight. Geeeeze!”
“Steve, get your phone if you don't already have it. You're coming with us.”
He stopped smacking the newel. He'd smacked the newel so often in the old house, it eventually broke off and needed to be replaced. “Why? Where we goin'?”
“I'm taking your sister to the hospital. Come on, we're going now.”
“Why? Because she's scared?”
“Goddammit, Steve, just come on!” Josh said, reaching the bottom, annoyed by his son's repetitive questions. Whywhywhywhy—that's the word that came out of his mouth the most.
They got into the SUV, a black Toyota Highlander, and were on the road seconds later. Tires screamed during a sharp, hang-onto-your-seats u-turn.
Josh sped down Lingland Street, drove past a STOP sign without stopping, and barely avoided T-boning a Honda. The old man behind the Honda's wheel, a George Burns lookalike, held in his horn for so long, Josh never heard it end. It just.... faded out.
“What's wrong with her? What's wrong, Dad?!” The concern in Steve's voice sounded too heavy for his age. He was sitting in the backseat, leaning forward, staring at his sister in the passenger-side seat. She breathed in long, loud wheezing breaths—the kind you might hear from some large, beached aquatic animal searching for water in its final seconds. Her eyes rolled, returned, rolled, and then blood spurted from her nose from a burst vessel. Then it ran steadily, turning her pink shirt red.
Her forearm continued to pulsate.
“I don't know, buddy, I just don't know!” Josh said, looking from road to Rachel, from road to Rachel. How he didn't wreck was beyond him. His foot rarely came off the gas and rarely pumped the brake. Cars and buildings went by, outside scenery that didn't really exist to anybody inside the Highlander.
Steve didn't start crying—or at least it didn't seem that way. He was already bawling before anyone in the car realized he'd given way to a sudden breakdown. His sister looked like she was dying, and it'd all happened way too fast. Moving into a new house was supposed to have been a good experience, not a dreadful one. And if she died, who would he pick on? Who would he tell his stupid jokes to? Who would he play Wii with? No one, that's who. She couldn't die, not today, not now. Not this way.
By the grace of God—or luck—they made it to Merrison Valley Medical Center only minutes later. Josh squealed to a stop at the emergency entrance. He didn't remember getting out, running around the vehicle, or pulling Rachel out of the passener-seat. Her body felt lifeless in his arms. And way heavier than usual. The normally eighty-pound girl weighed easily one-twenty now.
Still bawling, Steve got out of the back and followed his dad into the building, where two paramedics were conveniently standing, talking about which Victoria's Secret supermodel was the hottest. The man on the left claimed Adriana Lima; the man on the right claimed Gisele Bundchen. Both men, two strapping young black guys with shaved heads, stopped conversing when they saw the unconscious girl. Her face had become a bloody, red mess. Some of the blood had already turned brown, coagulated, and her forearm... her goddamn forearm was bubbling out and in.
“Please,” Josh cried, the tears blurring his vision. “Take her. Help her. Save her.”
Mr. Lima said, “What happened? Was she in some sort of accident?”
“Spider bite. I guess. I don't know!”
The men took her. She looked like a toy in their huge arms. They rushed her down a long, bright hallway, father and brother right behind them.