Spider Legs (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

Spider

T
HE CREATURE WAS
alert as it treaded water near heart-shaped corals that grew like mold from the sea floor. A crimson blob with light splotches rose from the mud in the wake of the pycnogonid. As the sea spider swam its large eyes fixed themselves on a brilliant red nudibrach mollusk, and then the spider crushed it with one of its gigantic legs.

In recent years various pollutants were causing species to mutate at a rate faster than normal. Medical wastes containing growth hormones, bacterial plasmids, and mutagens were being consumed by the local sea species. Many organisms were entirely unaffected, while some of the primitive invertebrates produced offspring with deformities and strange new physical characteristics. Many animals died. Others survived but with size and shape alterations: there were lobsters the size of pigs and with dozens of legs, two-headed crabs, and a multitude of new worm species with bioluminescent throat appendages and eyes the size of almonds. Marine scientists were becoming aware of these mutations and changes, and concern was rising. But they did not yet appreciate the magnitude of what was happening, or guess that not all of it was either natural or by chance. They would have some strong hints, however, soon enough.

As the sea spider stepped on a reef, the reef came alive: large
numbers of jelly-roll creatures fled from the crevices. Above was an iceberg. Below glided small sharks and large rays. These were routine.

Suddenly the pycnogonid sensed vibrations emanating from somewhere near the sea's surface. Something big was approaching from above. The terminal claws on the creature's front legs quivered in unison with its huge chelicerae as it decided to climb the iceberg's shelf. Two impulses drove the sea spider: its desire to eat and its innate rage.

It rose for another few minutes and hit the underside of the glacier with a big bump.
Crash!
A soft explosion of ice was set off by the sea spider. After the vibrations subsided, the pycnogonid gracefully positioned its head downward, flipped its body, and began to walk upside down on the flat underbelly of the glacier—defying gravity with the aid of buoyancy. The sea was its ceiling, the ice its floor. It didn't care. It just wanted to get where it was going, whatever way that worked. It walked along the underside of the glacier until it reached its edge.

In just a few minutes, the body of the pycnogonid broke the water's surface and scrambled up an area of the iceberg which had a relatively gradual slope. Just like its arthropod cousins, the lobsters and crabs, the huge sea spider could live for some time in the fresh air. Its gills began to work in overdrive with what moisture they still contained, sucking in life-giving oxygen from the atmosphere. As it gazed out over the water in the direction of the sound and movement, the creature saw a moving object seemingly about its own size. The fact that the object was large, that it was alien, caused the sea spider no fear. It crept down the precipices and glacial snow-fields into a glacial valley, and then reached the edge of the iceberg which touched the sea. It prepared itself to attack.

CHAPTER 5

Dream

A
LTHOUGH AN ICEBERG
could be as big as an entire village, any sailor would have rather been shipwrecked on land than on such ice. Aside from the cold, the sides of an iceberg were often very steep. Hidden holes, crevices, and caverns added to the danger. Even if a sailor wanted to explore an iceberg's glistening surfaces and caves, it was usually too difficult for most sailing vessels to dock alongside such a mass. The unfortunate ship that crashed into one of these islands of ice usually sank, and the water was so cold that even an Olympic swimmer would have died from exposure.

Kalinda had no intention of being shipwrecked on an iceberg and took extra care to stay clear of the mammoth chunks of ice. She carefully steered the boat into a narrow channel between two icebergs, and then in the direction of an impressive rhinoceros-shaped berg with a huge arch in the middle. It was wide enough to hold a football field. On the northern side of the berg was a huge, upward pointing prominence that reminded her of a rhinoceros's horn. From this distance it seemed that a chunk of ice was missing from an area of the rhino's face, forming a dark area which composed the rhino's eye. Kalinda got out her new expensive sophisticated camera and snapped a few
pictures. The camera had special protections against water splashed from any direction.

After a minute, she put the camera down. The dark area forming the “eye” on the iceberg seemed a bit strange, she thought, so she decided to take the boat closer for a better look. Just as people enjoyed watching clouds and finding animal and other shapes in their random patterns, sailors often looked at ice formations and imagined sea serpents and mermaids, and other more provocative patterns. She wondered if she should wake Garth up from his nap to see the berg with its pinnacles towering more than fourteen stories high. But of course it wouldn't evaporate before he got his chance.

Kalinda reached over to a radio on the bridge, turned it on, and began bobbing her head to the rhythm of the golden oldie “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes. Another few minutes passed; then a sudden wild scream startled her. It came from above. She looked up to see a large seagull circling with wings outstretched and motionless. Just a seagull.

The rhinoceros-shaped iceberg now loomed above her, more beautiful than any sculpture created by the hands of humans. The sun gave a kind of smooth brilliance to the whiteness of the iceberg hulk. Wherever there were cracks there were also veins of pale violet melt water that had flowed into the cracks and had refrozen. Again she gazed up at the ice horn pointing up at the blue sky like a hitchhiker's thumb.
But where was the dark area that formed its eye?
She looked some more. There it was, to the left.

The eye formation on the iceberg moved. Kalinda gasped. As the craft edged ever closer to the berg, her hands slipped on the wooden steering wheel. They were cold and clammy.

The eye moved again.

“Garth, wake up.” There was no noise from below the hatch. She killed the engine. “Garth?” As she walked to the hatch, she felt a nervous shiver go up her spine. She poked her head inside and saw her husband motionless on their small bed. His eye-lids
fluttered with the rapid movement of his eyes. Garth was dreaming.

Kalinda hesitated. She was alarmed about what she had seen, but she knew it was probably some natural phenomenon that Garth would immediately explain. On the other hand, his dreams were often special. If she let him wake naturally, he would share his dream with her before it faded, and they would both be richer. For a long time she had been interested in the rich and largely untapped realm of dream symbolism. Kalinda had taught Garth certain psychological methods for momentarily awakening to report his dreams to her before he fell back to sleep to continue his dreaming. They both practiced and enjoyed remembering their dreams. The sharing of dreams had improved their understanding of themselves and brought them closer as a couple. So she stifled her probably baseless fear and waited; she knew it would not be long.

It wasn't. In a moment he opened his eyes, saw her, and immediately spoke his dream, knowing that she would remember it better than he would, because she was fully awake and rational. Freshness was everything, because the details faded like morning fog, leaving no trace if not caught early. And indeed it turned out to be worthwhile.

He had dreamed that he was a child back at his parents’ house in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He had just purchased a strange new aquatic animal for his 110-gallon tropical fish tank. The tank was in the basement, already filled with a dazzling array of marine species: orange clown fish, long-snouted coralfish, powder blue surgeonfish, and wimplefish—all from the Indo-Pacific. When he dropped the newcomer into the tank, it immediately settled to the bottom. It looked a little like a tube worm with a sludge-green, chalky outer tube. When threatened, or at night, it retracted its pinky tentacles and hairlike projections, and closed the hinged lid at the top of its inch-thick tube. It seemed to eat the same prepared flake food that the other fish enjoyed—except it ate a lot more than other fish. Occasionally, he supplemented the diet with freeze-dried krill, blood worms, and brine shrimp.
So voracious was the tube worm that over the next few weeks Garth went through several cans of food. Each day the animal grew in size until one day it was so large it climbed out of the tank and waited in the corner of the room. When Garth came down to feed the fish, he saw that his hairy specimen was no longer in the tank. He looked around the room near the tank, and then a movement caught his eye. From the corner of the room, it came at him, with large saberlike teeth. Young Garth screamed and ran up the basement steps, the animal hot in pursuit. As he reached the basement door, he found to his horror it was locked. On the door was a computer keyboard and computer screen. The screen had the words:

PLEASE KEYPRESS CORRECT PASSWORD TO OPEN DOOR.

Garth typed one password after another on the keyboard, desperately, but none opened the door. The worm came closer and closer as it navigated the basement steps. Its moist body undulated along the carpet like that of a snake. It was only three steps away. Two steps away. One step away. Garth then suffered a fevered flash of inspiration and typed the password “DEATH,” the door finally opened, and—

“And that's as far as it goes, right now,” he concluded. “I'd better finish it.” At which point he closed his eyes and returned to sleep. He'd trained himself not to fear his dreams.

This was too much. He might sleep for another hour, now, and the continuation would be lost in the welter of the following dreams. They had gotten all they could. Her concern for what was outside returned, perhaps augmented by the horror of the dream itself.

“Garth? Wake up,” Kalinda called.

For a moment Garth was disoriented, trying to shake off the ashes of his weird dream, but then he realized where he was. Kalinda was heading outside the moment she saw him sit up. He stumbled after her, out of the hatch and on to the bright deck.

“What's wrong?” he asked, his attention shifting to the iceberg. “Wow, you discovered a magnificent berg.”

“There was something on it that moved. It's not there any more.”

“Maybe it was a chunk of ice that slipped.” As Garth watched the iceberg he seemed not fully focused, and she knew he was trying to recall details of his weird dream and the atmosphere of impending doom. She would feed those details back to him as soon as this other thing was checked.

“It couldn't be,” she said. “It was something dark. It looked like it was alive.”

“The light plays tricks. Could still be ice.”

“Garth, I thought I saw legs.”

“A bear? I think most of the bears this far north are white.”

“It was as big as this ship. Maybe bigger.”

He looked at her. “Just which one of us was dreaming?” he asked, smiling.

She remained serious. “I got your dream. But this was no dream. It alarms me. I don't know what I saw.”

“Natalie saw something in the sea,” he said, remembering. “I wonder—?”

“Maybe so. She was shaken. So am I.”

He did not try to joke any more, realizing that something strange was happening. She was relieved. She still hoped that he would come up with a natural explanation.

They looked around at the iceberg and the glittering water but saw and heard nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps there was a smell of low tide and crawling things, but nothing more. Now and then long streaks of sunlight shot through the cloudy sky and glimmered on the multihued facets of ice in the surrounding sea. “Whatever it was,” Garth said, “I guess we can't do too much about it now. It still could have been a trick of the light.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes listening to the strong tonal contrasts of the sea and the gulls. In the distance they saw a few men riding on 16-foot-long fiberglass boats. The sleek crafts resembled outrigger canoes. One of the men pushed and
pulled on the boat's sweep oar and moved his feet as if he were pedaling a bicycle to move the craft forward. Garth changed the subject.

“How about we get something to eat?”

“OK, would you like a tuna sandwich?” Kalinda asked. There was obviously no point in worrying further about what she might have imagined.

“Sounds great.”

“Onions, paprika, mayonnaise?”

“Perfect.” Even though he had had a late breakfast of eggs, bacon, homefries, and buttered toast, the cool fresh air had an invigorating effect which made him particularly hungry. She had seen it before. After such a cholesterol-rich meal, she thought he should have a few fruits and vegetables.

“How about another apple?” he said, agreeing.

“Coming right up.”

Kalinda suddenly started and cocked her head in the direction of one of the boat's railings. She ran toward the bow.
"What was that?"

“What?”

“I heard a scraping noise. Sounded like scratching.”

“Where?”

She slowly made her way to the aft rail. There was a creeping uneasiness at the bottom of her heart. Her emotions reminded her of the times her neighbor's dog ran after her when she was only seven years old. The dog was a large one, a German shepherd. Often Kalinda would come home crying to her mother as the dog outside barked and barked. Her mother complained to the dog's owner and finally the dog was kept inside the house when Kalinda walked home from school.

“Maybe a chunk of ice brushed against the boat,” Garth said. Kalinda feared she was beginning to give him the jitters, instead of being reassured by him. He looked all around. His tension seemed to rise a few percentage points. Still nothing unusual. But she didn't like this at all.

Boom. Boom. The scratching noises turned to dull thuds
which grew in volume. Now there was no doubt at all that something was up. She tried to suppress her wildest and most unreasonable fears, with little success.

“Maybe we should stay in the cabin and shut the door,” Kalinda said.

“I think it will be OK. It's probably a baby whale. Won't hurt us.”

Then a strange expression crossed his face. He was staring at her, or beyond her, eyes wide, jaw slack. “What is it, Garth?” she asked, feeling a tight knot of panic.

The ship began to rock back and forth. Water splashed onto the deck. Garth's mouth worked without producing sound as he looked around the ship. It was as if he had a pressing need to confirm he was on his own boat, that the universe had not just swiveled into some insane new dimension. He gazed at the familiar rails, gleaming deck, weathered ropes, as if willing some horror to go away. But whatever it was remained.

“Garth—” she said, clinging to a semblance of equilibrium. “What's
happening?"

One quarter of the vessel's railing disappeared off the side of the ship, as if torn away by some colossal hand.

“Get away from the rail,” Garth cried. She stepped away from it, then slowly turned. Before she looked back, Kalinda suddenly felt numb, as if her feelings were paralyzed. What could possibly be there? She forced her eyes to focus.

Slowly, a huge jointed leg appeared from the water near the lost rail. When she turned toward the rail, trying to make sense of this phantom, she saw the leg lift high, coming toward her.

Kalinda threw back her head and screamed a guttural cry of terror. She pirouetted back toward Garth but slipped on the wet deck. Now two more legs appeared as the monster tried to clamor onto the deck. There was a brittle crack of weathered wood, as the engine was torn off the boat. So sharp was the chitinous exoskeleton of the sea spider, that it left inch-deep scratch marks on the planking.

For that was what it was, she realized. An impossibly enormous
spider in the sea, a creature vaguely like that of Garth's dream, only much bigger and more horrible in form. Now she saw its awful snout emerging from the water, coming over the deck, dripping sea water or saliva. She saw its gangly body heaving up. This was worse than any nightmare!

Kalinda crawled away. The sea spider came closer. It loomed over her. Ice-cold water ran off the crevices in its body onto her—water so cold that it felt like an electric shock to her skin. She dragged her body forward a few steps, but was seconds too slow. The sea spider's leg came down on her foot with a tremendous force and tore half of it off with a crunching sound. She didn't even feel the pain, just heard the crunching as she wrenched her leg away. She looked back as if mesmerized. The multilegged attacker used it chelicerae for seizing and carrying Kalinda's half-foot to its mouth. There didn't seem to be much bleeding, oddly.

“Gaah,” Kalinda choked and shoved her fist into her mouth. She did not yet go into shock but continued to struggle, desperate to squeeze herself behind one of the large wooden boat masts, determined to place the mast between her and the monster. She held onto the mast with all her strength, only partially aware of the stinging pain in her fingers when she tore her thumbnails.

The sea spider continued to suck on her foot, and then, without warning, cracked the mast into two pieces. Blood oozed from the stump of her foot as she tried to tear a piece of her shirt to make a tourniquet. But the shirt would not tear. Kalinda felt as if her eyes had become as sunken as the eyes of a cadaver.