The Town Whispers: Season 1

Chapter 16: Echoes of Madness

In the corner of the room where the plaster walls met the paneled ceiling it plucked at the strings.

Spun from it's bulbous ends the web back and forth

Back and forth - rhythmically

Knotting each cross section with dagger-like fingers and then...

Plucking and strumming at its web.

Some of them scuttled across the floor, scavenging between floorboards - dashing behind furniture and through wall cracks as soon as they appeared.

Some of them, spun far reaching - thin and desperate webs. Hoping and praying to catch a fly, or a mosquito - or if it were fortunate enough, another thick and crunchy spider.

Then, there were spiders that built fortresses in the corners of rooms - spending days weaving their way back and forth, noting their strands at any chance they had to fortify their structure.

They were larger, hairier, and louder than the other types of spiders Tom had seen in his family's home.

They ate well - but there were never insects stuck in their trap, so what they ate and grew big on - Tom didn't know.

Their many eyes peered from beneath the thick, sticky sheets of woven string - staring at Tom.

They were hungry eyes - impossibly tiny but black as coal, and glinting with eager anticipation.

They could eat away his nightmares, Tom thought

But then a shudder ran up his back as he imagined 8 legs and their dainty stabbing of his face.

Sleep had been hard to come by as it was so those moments of slumber where Tom would be vulnerable to the poisoned pricks of those spider interlopers which anchored themselves in his room were far and few between.

That didn't stop his mind from whirling though.

It didn't stop the phantoms in their tracks.

When his mind wandered back to Ben - when the will to move or breath or feel had seeped out of his limbs, when he sat there slack jawed and catatonic for those brief respites from grief - he'd begin to feel it.

An itch on his back, or his face.

The itch of tiny hairs tickling his skin

The scuttling scratching.

The pinch of small jagged teeth.


And then there was William - squealing, crying, screeching William.

His brother - who was not his brother - or was? But also not the son of Mildred the same as Tom?

He couldn't keep it straight anymore - truths and fiction blending in the same way the dreams and nightmares he should have been having while asleep began to seep into his waking hours.

The first time he tried to leave him room after - well, after visiting Ben

Tom walked from his room to the stairs and peered down the steps hearing the echo of his voice calling him.

As the slurping misshapen vowels echoed their way to Tom - his eyes glazed over - tears banging at the gate threatening to wash over his face - and the numb, dumb, catatonic trance returned.

His arms were no longer his arms - his body stood immobile and loose in its posture - his head tilted to the left a little too far to be natural and everything looked so far away as if Tom's consciousness had been shrunk and sent to the depths of a deep dark pit just like....

The leaflets of what was and what was not fell from a shelf up on high - figments of imagination snapped to the edges of reality.

The staircase was not as it was just mere seconds ago - no, no, no - please god no Tom thought as he snapped to.

The banister was covered in the dusty glowing alien-like foliage Tom called Bone blooms - the steps jagged rock - the ceiling dripped with green algae water - and from deep within the recesses of the living room that Tom had known to be just to the left of the bottom of the stairs he could here his name being called - he felt his summons.

Tom could,

Feel his heart,

Racing,

Just the way it had,