St. Felix

Vamos, Miguel.

Author’s Note: This is a horror story about spiders. You’ve been warned.

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“No luck, Miguel. I’m sorry.”

“Not one exterminator on the whole island?”

Tabitha sighed.

“Miguel. People on the most remote islands in the world consider St. Felix the boonies. You might as well be on Pluto.”

Miguel chuckled into the phone, using his other hand to flip Tabitha the bird.

“It’s the rainy season, as you know,” she continued. “And every sane resident of St. Felix has decamped for higher elevation, where the tides aren’t lapping at their front doors. So no, there is not one exterminator available for you.”

She over-enunciated the last three words, he thought.

“Got it,” he said. He was ready to hang up.

He heard clicking, pictured the way she tapped her pen against her teeth, braced himself for more I-told-you-so.

“Speaking of the rainy season,” Tabitha continued. “I booked you on a flight tomorrow morning — a puddle jumper to the main island. And you have a room at the Four Seasons if you want it.”

“Tab, please. I can handle a few spiders.”

“This has nothing to do with the spiders, Miguel. You need a real roof in a storm like this, none of that palm leaf garbage. This is about me not having to sell your second book posthumously.”

“Oh, but Tab, think of the book sales! The reclusive writer dies in a flood on a remote island? Come on! My last words, leather bound for just $29.99? You could finally buy that ski lodge!”

She ignored him.

“It can all be canceled of course, if you prefer to ride out the storm in your spider-infested lean-to.”

God she was rude.

“It’s not a a lean-to. It’s a…shack.” He looked around at his cozy, one-room rental, with its charming thatched roof and open-air windows, wide views of the ocean, the constant background hum of the waves. It was so much more than a shack. It was his dream retreat. “And it’s not infested. Just rustic.”

“Right. Well, the spiders are in your shack because of the rain, Miguel. They are going to keep arriving in your shack until after the rainy season ends, many months from now. You can swat them and stomp them, but you’re on their island.”

Miguel had moved to St. Felix to work on his second book because it was cheap, tropical, and hard to get to. He hadn’t considered things like the effect of rain on the local spider population.

Now the sea was choppy and peaked with foam. A palm tree bent in the wind like something out of a cartoon. He knew the storm could last for days.

He didn’t want to spend days stomping on spiders in his shack.

“Ok, the Four Seasons it is. And Tabitha—“

“Yes?”

“Have I told you you are the best agent ever?”

“Bad weather is a writer’s best friend, Miguel. I’ll catch up with you after the storm.”

“Aye-aye captain,” he said, but she was gone.

He drummed his fingers on his laptop. He didn’t need a storm to get work done. Miguel Stephens was astonishingly productive when he put his mind to it; he knew what his distractions were and how to eliminate them. Say, for example, moving to a remote island with no nightlife, no sports car to tinker with or golf courses to waste a day, not even friends or family for thousands of miles. He had a hell of a first draft to show Tabitha; he would send it to her today, knock her socks off.

The angry spider bite between his thumb and finger would make writing impossible anyway. He balled his hand into a fist and relaxed it, watching the dome go white, then red. When he squeezed, a bright pain radiated from his fingers to his wrist.

“Fucking spiders,” he said to himself. He wasn’t phobic or anything, but it made him squirm to imagine a spider crawling across his hand, biting him while he slept. After half a dozen sightings, he was ready to soak the shack in poison.

He glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye.

Another spider, light green like the flesh of a kiwifruit, was stepping across his bedspread. The way they walked was so unnatural, pointy legs undulating in every direction. It made his skin crawl.

He reached for a book on his nightstand and smashed the spider with a soft thump.

When he picked up the book, there was a green smudge on the bedspread, legs as thin as whiskers sticking out of it.

“Sorry Jay,” he said to the author’s photo, now smeared with a little splat of spider guts. The book was Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Damned. He tried not to read too much into that.

As he contemplated the book, dozens of tiny spiders started to crawl out from between the pages. They swarmed the cover, a rippling sea of bright green legs. Miguel gasped and threw the book on the bed.

The spiders disappeared; he had imagined them. Maybe he was a little phobic.

“Time for a drink, Miguel,” he said out loud, rubbing the back of his neck. He stepped into his flip flops, ducked against the drizzling rain, and practically jogged away from the spider-infested shack.

***

Miguel’s local bar was a simple hut on the sand that served warm beers for a buck. The bartender Edison was his closest friend on St. Felix. He threw back his long locs with a laugh.

“Miguel, what did you think when you came here?”

“What do you mean?”

“St. Felix?”

“Yeah?”

“My man, St. Felix is the patron saint of aranha. Spiders, man! You need to brush up on your Catholicism. You threw a dart at a map or what?”

“More like a Google image search,” Miguel said, a little sheepish. “It looked like paradise!” He had read glowing reviews of St. Felix. But apparently everyone else knew to leave in October.

“I’m sorry, man. I’m not laughing at you,” Edison said, laughing at him. “St. Felix is paradise! For like eight months of the year.”

“Right. And the other four it’s a spider playground, like something out of a horror movie,” Miguel cracked a smile. It was sort of funny, a grown man being tormented by creatures half an inch across.

“You have to learn to live with our little friends for a few months. They’re harmless.”

“Harmless? You kidding me?” Miguel held out his hand, showing the bright red bite.

“Dude,” Edison’s eyebrows lifted. “Those little green spiders did that?”

Miguel nodded.

“You sure? I never saw a bite like that.”

“No shit?” Miguel’s skin prickled.

“No shit, man. I never heard of them making a big bite like that. Annoying yes, but biting? Nah. Maybe you’re allergic.”

“Maybe,” Miguel said, not relishing the idea of a developing a new medical condition on a remote island.

“Go get yourself some cream before Adelma closes up shop.”

“Nah, it’s ok. I’m flying to the capital tomorrow to wait out the storm. I’ll get something there.” Like a doctor, he thought.

“Good plan. I’m heading up to higher elevation myself. I’ll see you on the other side, my man.”

***

Hours later, Miguel woke under a heavy, slimy feeling. There was a dank smell around him, his thatched roof giving off an organic musk after soaking in the rain. Outside, it was still dark.

He hobbled to the bathroom, feeling a little wobbly. His feet were strangely tender and achy. He felt hungover, surprising considering he had only had three beers the night before. Maybe four.

I hope I’m not getting the flu. That would be the icing on the cake, he thought.

He stuck his head under the faucet and drank deeply, letting the water spill over his face, and washing the sticky crust from his eyelids.

He reached for the light, and flinched in its bright glare.

His face in the mirror was grotesque. His bloodshot eyes were ringed in purple, as dark and cloudy as bruises. Over his left eyebrow, another bite had appeared, fiery red. It pushed down on his eyelid, deforming his expression.

He rubbed a hand across his three-day whisker growth, coming away with a long strand between his fingers. Spider silk. He flung it away, a squirm rippling through his whole body.

Then he noticed his arm. A neat row of bites from elbow to wrist showed where the spiders had feasted on him while he slept. Each red welt was topped with a hard white dome. Underneath, his skin was webbed with red veins thin as eyelashes.

He looked down at his aching feet with growing panic. They were covered in bites. The sight of it brought up the liquid from his stomach, and he threw up into the toilet until he felt concave.

I have to get out of here. The Four Seasons beckoned in his imagination.

He stumbled back to bed and reached for his phone, figuring he had a couple hours to get ready for the flight. But the screen told him it was 1:15.

P.M.

Miguel ran to the window, realizing that it wasn’t early-morning dark, but storm dark. He had missed the flight by hours, and the first bands of serious rain had already arrived.

He heard Tabitha’s voice in his head: the spiders are in your shack because of the rain, Miguel. He felt woozy and let himself drop to the floor, where he sat stunned at how his circumstances had changed. The room looked different from the floor. Shabby, filthy, dark.

He looked up at the thatched ceiling, unsure how much rain it could resist. And he noticed, for the first time, the thin streamers of web dangling from the eaves. As he looked at them, the ceiling moved in a spot. Then another. His vision resolved into long skinny legs waving in the air, searching for purchase. Fat green bodies like moving polka dots. There must have been dozens.

He felt something brush his neck and swatted at it, hauling himself to his feet in a near panic.

He stumbled back to the bathroom and turned on the shower, letting the room fill with steam. In his experience, a hot shower solved a lot of problems. And at least the bathroom seemed to be spider-free for now. His heartbeat slowed. He closed the drain, filling the tub and submerging his aching body, pressing a washcloth to his swollen eyebrow.

Maybe Tab could get a helicopter. Maybe he could catch Edison and head up to the mountains for a few days.

Soaking in the hot water, his bites started to feel better. He noticed the white peaks were gone, and the welts were flattening. He pulled his hand out of the water and inspected it. It was definitely improving. In the center of the bite, he thought he saw something. He looked closely and—

No.

No, no, no, he begged. It wasn’t possible, but there it was: a green leg, whisper thin, waving from the top of that dome on his hand. A baby spider, hatching out of his skin.

He shook his head— surely it was another hallucination. But this one didn’t disappear. Instead, the domes on his tortured feet opened all at once, hundreds of spider legs poking out of his skin, their bodies emerging together in a wave.

He felt the blood draining out of his head. He knew he was fainting, and he thanked god for the mercy.

***

When Miguel woke, thunder was shaking the little house. Thick, white webs stuck to his face and drifted down into the cold bathwater. His feet were purplish black, rotten rings showing the places where the spiders had hatched.

Panic flooded back in an instant. He jumped, swatting maniacally at his face. But his feet in their destroyed state couldn’t support him. He slipped and went down hard on the bathroom floor, smacking his head on the tile. He tasted blood.

He had to get to his phone, call for help, tell Tabitha to arrange a rescue.

Miguel pressed his palms into the tile, trying to lift himself, but his head was heavy. Blood dripped from his mouth.

He wished he had emailed her the draft. It was a really good draft. It might make her less mad about rescuing him.

He put his cheek down for a moment. Only a moment, to feel the cold tile on his aching head.

In an instant, a mass of green bodies gathered on the floor in front of his nose, spiders crawling all over each other, tap-tapping their thousands of legs.

Miguel tried to hold onto a thought, a feeling. Revulsion, panic, anything to get his body moving. But he was losing the battle. He had a memory of not liking this— the way their legs twitched and flexed, their joints so oddly mechanical. But now he only felt tired.

He felt himself fading, and watched as the mass of spiders hurriedly spun webs around his hand. Then his vision blurred and his eyelids shut like a slammed door.

***

When Miguel next cracked an eye, his hand was completely wrapped in silver white webbing, tacked palm-down to the floor.

His index finger, which he could see through the threads, looked horrible. It was swollen and misshapen, a purplish grey. A tear dripped from his eye and splashed on the floor, landing in the puddle of dried black blood that glued his cheek to the tile.

Miguel didn’t have the strength to lift his arm or his head. He felt weak and woozy, and thought he probably had a concussion. Not to mention whatever the spiders were doing to him— were they biting him too? Was he poisoned?

He concentrated on that one single finger. That blackening digit was not going to last much longer if he didn’t do something.

He wondered if it was still connected to his body at all. If any of his fingers were. He wondered if he would ever write again. Would he ever hold a pen again, laying down those thick swoops of ink that gave his life so much purpose? Would he get to flip the pages of his second book, or any book, ever again? He would give it all back to save this finger, he realized—the career, the fancy publisher, the agent doing favors for him continents away. All for a single finger.

He concentrated, activating every part of his nervous system. His finger twitched. It twitched!

He wiggled it, and sensation began to return. It felt like a limb gone to sleep, heavy with a sizzling around the edges. The threads popped and the finger was free! Tears splashed down on the tile as hope returned to him.

They’re only spiders, Miguel. You’re a grown man.

He set his attention on the next finger, one he couldn’t see behind the white curtain, but prayed was still there.

As he did, a small battalion of spiders scuttled over to the index finger. They sank their fangs into his ruined skin, paralyzing it. Within a few seconds, as the venom made its way through his nervous system, his head went loose, and he could no longer feel his hand.

He thought they must have been biting him while he was passed out, injecting him with poison— that’s why he couldn’t stand up. He wondered how how many dozens of spider bites he had endured.

Someone will come, Miguel. People don’t die from spider attacks.

He watched as they replaced the broken webs, silently begging them to stop. He breathed out a long, hitching breath.

While the rain beat percussive on his roof, Miguel swam in and out of consciousness. Someone will come, he told himself, whenever he could remember to. He watched in time lapse as the spiders wove their sticky webs around him, turning single strands of silk into swathes as white and strong as a straight jacket.

***

“Hello? Is anyone in there?”

Miguel heard the voice through web earmuffs and it stirred him awake. He hadn’t realized he was still alive.

“Hello?! Senhor Miguel?”

His face was wrapped from nose to chin in webs as thick as gauze. I’m here, he screamed in his head.

Luis and Oscar Alves had been sent by an English woman, Tabitha, to find her friend. There weren’t any foreigners around this time of year, so they knew it was a fool’s errand. But they were technically the island’s rescue personnel— Oscar had been to EMT training in the capital, Luis mostly assisted— so they were obligated to check.

It took them a few days to make their way to the beach, this being the rainy season. But as soon as things were clear, the brothers took their ATV across the mountains to the place she claimed he was living.

The shack they found was abandoned, sheathed in thick white spiderwebs, as derelict buildings on St. Felix tended to be.

“Oscar, a casa está abandonada. Há teias de aranha por todo o lado!”

“Luis, a Dona Tabitha disse que estava aqui hospidado um senhor Miguel. O escritor.”

O escritor! The writer! They were here to get him. But something was wrong.

They thought the house was abandoned. Teias de aranha. Was that spiderwebs? Miguel tried to picture what the outside of the house must look like, so covered in spiderwebs that the men thought it was abandonada. The idea overwhelmed him. How many thousands of spiders were surrounding him? How many days had it been? He prayed for the men not to give up.

“Miguel! Are you inside? Do you need help? Miss Tabitha sent us to get you. We can evacuate you today.”

The tongue in his mouth was stiff and dry, like a piece of leftover food he had the urge to swallow. The best he could do was grunt, and he did, as loudly as he could manage with the shallow breaths he dragged in. But the vibrations brought a herd of spiders running. They wrapped his neck in strands of silk that tightened by the second. He couldn’t feel their bites, but he knew by now they would paralyze his throat.

“Oscar, Eu lá não vou. Estou cheio de medo.”

“MIGUEL! If you’re hurt, try to knock on something or yell.”

He tried to send a signal to his hand— knock on something Miguel! Bang on something!—but he couldn’t even feel where his hands were.

A muffled groan emerged from his desiccated lips, no more than a dusty sob, and he wondered if he still had hands, feet, any prayer of living through this. I’m right here, he screamed in his head.

His body was a cracked, empty husk. He had served as both incubator and food to this colony, a warm-blooded bonanza supporting hundreds of lives. For days, his stupid heart had kept beating, giving them as much as they wanted.

Untold generations of spiders had survived the rainy season on St. Felix by finding a cave and trapping what was inside to eat. But it had been many centuries since they managed to get a human. Every sane person decamped in the rainy season, after all.

Now a large spider approached Miguel’s bloodshot eye, its own six eyes as blank and lifeless as shining black stones. He blinked it away. But the spider was undaunted, quickly weaving an eye patch thicker than a wad of cotton balls.

He tried to groan, but the webs constricted his lungs and throat. The ocean roared in the distance, muffling any sound he might have made.

“Ok, Luis. Vamos então.”

Vamos, Miguel repeated in his head, as the sticky silk ensnared each eyelash and the room began to go dark.

Maybe someone would brave the webs someday and find his draft. It was a good draft.

Vamos.

---

This is a Subscriber Story. Elite subscribers to Age of Aquarius get to star in their own tailored tale of woe. Are you ready for yours?

Special thanks to my friend and subscriber Naomi Redd for her help with the Portuguese translations.