Arachnid on the Appalachian

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years but one night, a candle burned in the window. This was the night that Officer Brown and his partner Hayes had been called out to the old Fuller farm for a noise disturbance. Brown sat next to a very bored Hayes that had a bad habit of noisily sipping away at one stale cup of Joe all night.

Slurp, sigh, slurp, sigh.

The sound was deafening. So, to actually be called to a noise disturbance was a relief.

They drove the blue and white car towards the farm, turning off the single paved lane onto a dirt road, they passed by the old Fuller farm orchard filled with apple trees that needed pruned and the now peeling, crooked sign reading “Fuller Farm Orchard, Pick Your Own!”. It had been several years since the farm had thrived. At this point, a neighboring farmer came in to tend the last of the meat cattle, cut the hay, and harvest the corn, but he did little for the orchard. Folks still came to pick their own bounty, and it wasn’t unusual to see the occasional hiker from the Appalachian Trail straying from their journey for some fresh fruit.

The dirt road dipped into trees growing closer and taller, a small patch of woods between the orchard and the farm. To Brown’s left, he saw something flicker. With a quick glance out the window, he saw it, a candle burning in the abandoned cabin that lay at the end of an overgrown lane. He tried to remember, was the old farmer’s brother back?

“Do you know if the Fuller brother is back in town?” Brown asked Hayes.

“What?” Hayes replied with her own question.

“The cabin in the woods,” Brown clarified, “the younger Fuller brother used to live there.”

Hayes shrugged, “Who knows.”

“Well,” he speculated, “if he isn’t back, someone is.”

Soon their headlights illuminated the once white farm house. It’s siding was now covered in a more puzzle like appearance with chips of white flaking off. Despise the clock reading a little past midnight, lamps glowed their soft yellow haze from gaping windows upstairs and down. Brown parked the car in front of the crooked porch.

Slurp, sigh.

Brown did everything he could not to roll his eyes.

“Let’s head up,” Hayes said with a certain amount of chipper unusual for such a late hour replacing her coffee to the cup holder.

Each porch step moaned with the weight of the two police officers. Brown wasn’t sure the wavy floor board would hold them both, but they approached the front door anyways. He raised his hand to knock, but before he could, the door whipped open.

Before them stood old farmer Fuller exactly as one would expect. He wore a worn out plaid robe and grey wool slippers. The wisps of white hair atop his head jostled slightly in the breeze. His face dawned a frown; he gave each police officer a long stare before saying anything.

“Well,” his old weary voice barked.

“Ah, yes, good evening,” Brown said with a nod. “We had a call about a noise disturbance.”

“Noise disturbance,” he scoffed. “It’s a whole farm disturbance, the cows are in quite a state.”

“Is that what the noise disturbance is?” asked Hayes, her eyebrow raising.

“It’s a whole ruckus in the barn,” exclaimed the farmer, his knobby, arthritic hands waving in the air. “I wouldn’t have called if there wasn’t somethin' wrong.”

“Did you check the barn, sir?” asked Brown.

Fuller eyed Brown, “I checked briefly. I’m sure it’s who ever has been stealin' my cattle.”

“There’s missing cattle?” Brown asked.

“I’m sure of it,” he answered.

The two officers exchanged glances and Brown said, “We’ll give a look around your barn then if you don’t mind.”

The old farmer motioned his hands out towards the officers, palms up, and nodded, “Please do, get who ever it is off my property. I’m sick of my cattle getting riled up every night, and anyway, watch out for the cobwebs out there. There's a mess of 'em.”

Brown and Hayes surveyed the barn, waving away whispy webs dangling from beams. There was nothing seemingly out of the ordinary. With no signs of any intruders, they merely scanned the other out buildings with their flashlights. Despite the wind that was picking up, no doors stood ajar. There was no reason to be suspicious; shrugging, they returned to the farm house to give a report.

“Well?” asked the farmer.

“Nothing appeared out of the ordinary,” Brown stated.

Hayes added reassuringly, “Maybe the cattle were just uneasy with that storm that’s supposed to roll through.”

“Doubtful,” the farmer sneered.

“Or a hiker was seeking shelter with the impending rain,” she added. “Either way, they must’ve passed through.”

The farmer didn’t take that as reassurance, so on a whim Brown asked, “Is your brother back in town?”

“My brother?” scoffed the farmer. “He hasn’t been around in twenty years.”

The officers shrugged, mentioning if there was any more trouble to reach out, but with nothing else to go on, they said their goodbyes.

As soon as the door to the squad car closed Brown said, “We need to go check out that cabin if it isn’t his brother staying there.”

“Probably a hiker that cut through the pasture looking for shelter,” Hayes mumbled.

“Maybe,” Brown said. “In any case, they are trespassing.”

They pulled up the lane full of ferns and overhanging branches slowly and steadily. The single flame flickering through the filthy front window. Brown squinted his eyes, he didn’t notice movement inside, but he did notice the front door was ajar. There were no other vehicles, which made sense if it was a wandering wayfarer who strayed from the Appalachian Trail. Still, something didn’t seem right.

Slurp. Sigh.

With his thoughts interrupted, he unbuckled and grabbed his flashlight getting ready to go inside, “Looks like we have a trespasser.”

“Seems like it,” nodded Hayes with her coffee in hand.

“You head around back, I’ll approach from the front.”

They exited their vehicle, not necessarily quietly, but not loudly either. Anyone inside was sure to have heard them approach in the car, and if not, the doors closing had to have been audible. But, as Hayes quietly went around back, Brown noted there was still no obvious movement from the inside of the cabin.

With nothing but a crooked overhang above the door and a single cinder block serving as a step, Brown rested his foot on the ledge and rapped on the door that hung halfway open. Silence followed. He knocked again.

“This is Officer Brown,” he called out. “We had a call about a disturbance from the property owner here. Is anyone in there?”

Nothing.

He nudged the door the rest of the way open to reveal the dimly lit one room cabin. Strait away he noticed there were indeed tracks on the floor, his brow furrowed, they were numerous. He surmised this must be a squatter situation. Stepping in, he noted a broken bed with rumpled sheets in front of him against the wall, covered in dust. To his left, more dust lay upon the table that stood under the front window bearing the single candle. No other windows gave way to the outside world, and besides the bed and the table, there was only one over turned chair. Just beyond the table, in the corner, there was something else. Brown squinted and tried to make out the stack, or the pile of something in the corner. It seemed like a tangle of fibers and glistened with the golden light.

“Hello?” he called out and stepped further into the cabin.

He slowly walked towards the strange stack of glistening threads that was heaped almost as high as the table. As he looked closer, it was clear there was an opening in the fibers along the wall. The hole was large enough an adult could crawl through. Bizarrely enough, it seemed like a nest of some sort, maybe the squatter had a cat or a dog and this was their bed?

“What the-”

The back door whipped open, Brown’s hand went instinctively to his gun.

“It’s just me,” Hayes apologized. “But there is something you have to see. Remember the ‘missing cows’ Fuller mentioned?”

Brown nodded.

“I think I found them.”

Brown stepped out of the back door behind his partner whose flashlight lit a leaf covered forest floor. As his eyes adjusted to the new darkness, Brown realized he wasn’t just staring at leaf debris and sticks. As his eyes adjusted, “branches” morphed into bones littered about, and just beyond the closest hemlock lay a mostly decomposed angus. Now the stench was obvious, and both officers covered their noses.

“Seems like we have a squatter that has made themselves more than comfortable here,” Brown said.

Hayes nodded, avoiding opening her mouth.

Noticing an outhouse amongst the evergreens, Brown nodded with his head towards it, “You double check the outhouse, I noticed a cellar door along the side of the house when we pulled up, let’s find this guy and take him in.”

Hayes nodded again.

Brown turned and shined his light towards the cabin. For a brief moment, slithering amongst the trees beside the structure, there seemed to be a black shadow of a man. He whipped his light over to illuminate the trees, nothing. The breeze tickled the back of his neck and he shivered. Why did something not feel right?

He headed towards the side of the house, and just as he reached the cellar entrance, he heard the back door slam. His hand again flew to his gun as he quickly pulled the flashlight up to scan his surroundings.

“Hayes?” he called out. “Hayes, did you see anyone?”

Again, nothing.

He jogged to the corner of the cabin and peered around to the back. The door was indeed closed. He steadied his breathing, after all, it was most likely the wind that was picking up that had slammed the door shut. But on the ground, next to the door lay the other officer's flashlight. Brown looked around for signs of his partner. Now, he did pulled the gun from it’s holster and inched towards the door.

The crooked wooden door didn’t quite fit the frame that held it. Below the rusted door nob, through the a sliver of a gap, Brown eyed the one room cabin. Taking deep breaths carefully, he let his pupil adjust to the yellow glow of the space.

He could just make out his partner’s feet on the floor, lifeless. There was an odd pitter-patter of what seemed like several feet, then suddenly blackness covered the crack he was peering through. He spun, placing his back against the cabin wall steadying his breath. He knew there was at least one person in the cabin with Hayes, though he swore there were multiple footsteps; he decided he needed a better visual, especially if there were mulitple perpatrators.

Brown crept to the front of the cabin whispering into his radio, “We’ve got a man down, we need an ambulance and back up on the Fuller Farm at the cabin. I repeat, Hayes is down, we need an ambulance and back up.”

He managed to sneak under the window where he first saw the flickering flame. Holding his gun close to his chest, he heard it.

Slurp, sigh, slurp, sigh.

His brow furrowed. What was he hearing?

Slurp, sigh, slurp, sigh.

He shook his head and continued to the front door that still hung slightly open. There wasn’t enough time to simply stay there and wait for back up. He knew he had to at least try and get Hayes out. There hadn’t been a gunshot, so he surmised that who ever the culprit was had used blunt force trauma to perhaps knock Hayes out. Perhaps a heavy branch or punch? Certainly, he would have the upper hand with a firearm and badge. He replayed the layout of the room in his own mind and where it seemed Hayes had been laying then he counted in his head to three before rushing the door and kicking it open with all his might.

“Freeze!” he yelled.

Instead of the surprised look of a miscreant, Brown was met with something much worse. Before him, looming over Hayes, was two men seemingly hunkered over her lifeless body. He shook his head, this couldn’t be, four crooked legs with scraps of fabric emerged from one torso; it wasn’t two men, it was one. The four legs balanced on their dirty, human-like toes and two misshapen arms protruded from the ragged shirt mid back. One of the hands twitched in the air like it was reaching for something and the other rested on one of the leg’s knees. Two more arms straddled Hayes. There it was, the source of the sound.

Slurp, sigh, slurp, sigh.

All of this was taken in by Brown in the few seconds before the creature whipped its head around to look at him, it’s feeding interrupted. The human face was distorted with blood encircling a scowling mouth too large for an actual person. The nose was crooked and propped between not two eyes, but a handful, Brown couldn’t make out how many before the thing reared up on its back legs and scuttled backwards towards the heap of glistening fibers in the corner of the room.

“I said freeze,” shouted Brown with more gusto than he was feeling.

Backing into what was clearly it’s nest, the creature looked Brown over. It let out a screeching laugh, crawling out of it’s bed. Brown backed up a few stumbling steps as the man with spider-like features stood to it’s full height, it’s head nearly brushing the ceiling. It suddenly lunged towards Brown and he fired. Recoiling, the creature clutched one of it’s four arms and hissed at Brown showing off long, tan and crimson stained fangs.

Suddenly, red and blue lights flashed into the old cabin, over powering the candle’s dim light. The creature glanced out the window briefly before lunging again at Brown. He was knocked flat on his back after a double punch to his jaw. Hitting his head hard on the floor, the room began to dim. The eight legged monster snarled one last time at Brown before bolting out the back door and the room went black.

That was the last day Hayes served, a puncture wound in her neck was determined the cause of death, but the coroner could never deduce what would leave such a strange bite and why there was such little blood at the scene. The spidery nest that was left in the corner was written off as an odd infestation and the cabin was torched; meanwhile, most believed the cows had simply gotten loose, lost and in a weak state, attacked by some sort of predator. As for Brown, he knew what it all was from, the arachnid man, with it’s eight crooked limbs and hungry face. Only a few in his town believed his story, and the rest chalked it up to the delusions left over from a hearty concussion.

But if you find yourself on the Appalachian Trail, keep an eye out for strange tracks and the sound of the feasting beast…

Slurp, sigh. Slurp, sigh.