Web
by Shawn Montgomery
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
Gregory Sampson awoke with a jerk.
For a terrifying moment, he couldn’t breathe and began flailing his arms in the air, knocking over his wine glass.
As the fog of sleep lifted and air filled his lungs again, he tried recalling what was disturbing about the dream. But the details were disorganized and nonsensical and quickly faded from memory.
What did stick was the singular image of a monstrous, shadowy thing attacking him. What it was exactly Gregory couldn’t remember, and the situation would have been amusing if he wasn’t frightened still.
For the next several minutes, he remained on the couch, staring blankly at the overturned glass, making no move to pick it up. With the shades pulled, the living room took on a dreamlike drabness, and Gregory felt too exhausted to do anything but stare up at the yellowed, water-stained ceiling.
Finally, he ran his scratchy tongue over his lips and moaned. He felt like something was stuck in his mouth, tickling the back of his throat—a strand of hair perhaps? But every time he tried clearing his throat, it only tickled more until he felt like he was going to retch.
He forced himself to sit up, then stuck his finger into his mouth. After some effort, he managed to pull out a small clump of translucent threads. If this gummy tuft was hair, it wasn’t his, and when he inspected the mass more closely, he thought it looked more like entangled strands from a cobweb.
Wiping his hand along the couch cushion, Gregory looked around the living room with disgust. It was wrecked with empty wine bottles, piles of dirty laundry, and barely touched takeout containers.
He noticed the sheet of plywood lying unceremoniously on the floor. And above the plywood, the hole.
Years ago, when the building was still a hotel, the chute was used as a dumbwaiter. Instead of properly covering the aperture with drywall and painting over it, the property manager just drilled a piece of plywood over the gap. Over time, the screws had loosened inside the wall, and the flimsy sheet frequently toppled over, exposing the large and dark space.
As he stumbled closer to the chute, Gregory inhaled a gust of musty air and gagged. This is a terrible place, he thought. Steam always seemed to clank from the radiator, the sink taps abounded with rust, and swaths of yellow stained the ceiling. It was cold, cheerless, and shabby. He hated living here but was stuck until he could afford a nicer place.
Just as he turned away, something caught his eye. A sizable spiderweb stretched above him like some garish Halloween decoration. From how expansive it was, he judged it must have been there awhile, and he wondered how he hadn’t noticed it before. Had parts of it fallen into his mouth while he was passed out on the couch?
The thought triggered another wave of nausea, and for the next several minutes, Gregory stumbled around the apartment, looking for something that he could use to sweep the web away. Finally, he gave up and retreated to his bedroom.
After collapsing on the sagging mattress, he covered his face with a pillow and groaned.
Fuck it, he thought.
Fuck what, exactly?
How about this current relapse, and the two other relapses he had trudged through the past year. Despite co-owning a locally successful coffeeshop, Gregory didn’t have a girlfriend, no friends other than his co-workers, and no definite plans for the future. He woke up stressed, gritted his teeth through the day and returned back home exhausted.
At first, alcohol had helped him coast through the nights, but then he drank to deal with the days. It didn’t take long for him to realize he was trapped.
He spent week-long stints in detox facilities, then participated in both group and individual therapy, as well as being prescribed medications to help stave off cravings and lessen the frequent panic attacks. But as he gradually returned to his daily routines, Gregory began to neglect his weekly appointments and didn’t bother refilling the medications.
After all, the coffeeshop was busy; it kept him busy and especially distracted. He felt better this time, he had convinced himself. But after another relapse and detox stay, he came to the realization that he had been kidding himself. He didn’t have any more control of his life sober than he had when he was drunk. And so the vicious cycle continued.
This latest lapse surprised him, however. He thought that he had settled in more gracefully with his recovery, managing his anxiety with a lighter work load and practicing daily breathing exercises he had learned in therapy.
But then it happened again.
Strolling home from work, Gregory replayed the difficult phone call he had with his mother the night before. Overwhelmed with being his father’s sole caregiver for the past two years, she shared her agonizing decision to admit him to a care facility that specialized in Alzheimer’s.
Still in shock to learn of his father’s swift decline, he tried distracting himself by mentally reviewing the mounting list of work-related responsibilities and meetings.
At one point, he happened to glance at some folks seated along the sidewalk. Various arrangements of cocktails and beers twinkled in the late-afternoon sun.
This sight wasn’t unusual; he had passed such scenes dozens of times and was rarely tempted to stop and join the revelry. If he felt the impulse to drink, it usually dissipated quickly.
This time, however, the urge burrowed deep.
You can have fun, too. Just one drink and move on. It’s that simple.
Before he realized what he was doing, Gregory turned and entered the closest bar. Once he stepped inside, the boozy smells immediately caressed him. The sensation of shimmying onto the stool was like hugging a friend he hadn’t seen in a long time. The bartender glanced at him with indifference, not caring about who he was or what he was about to do to himself. He wiped the wooden counter with a towel and asked Gregory what he wanted.
He ordered wine. A Pinot Gris from Oregon. Light and crisp. Soccer moms would sip it on summer afternoons, trying to unwind from the chaos of parenthood.
Fuck it, he thought, watching the bartender pour the wine into a glass.
It wasn’t like he was downing shots of bourbon. It wasn’t even a pint of IPA.
And it tasted good.
Really good.
Gregory drained the glass in two gulps.
Afterwards, his head swam. The sensation was similar to being wrapped snug in a large fleece blanket. He felt content. Resigned. Happy even.
He paid the bartender and left.
Ambling along the sidewalk, he passed by his neighborhood bodega. He watched his hands push the heavy glass door inward. As he entered the store, the Korean woman at the counter paid him little notice. She knew him—he had come in dozens of times.
His gaze set ahead, Gregory strode down the snack aisle towards the beverage coolers. He scanned the beer section first but settled on wine, choosing two bottles of cheap rose´. The woman rang him up, put the bottles in a paper sack, and nodded politely to signal the end of the transaction.
He staggered the remaining three blocks to his apartment. You can just set the wine down on the sidewalk, his reasonable voice pleaded. Reward yourself with a big bowl of ice cream and a fun horror movie.
But he continued holding onto the sack, the bottles poking the side of his ribs. As soon as he entered his apartment, Gregory put one bottle into the fridge, the other onto the kitchen table. He then retrieved a water glass and filled it half-way with wine. It was simultaneously sour and sweet, and he grimaced as he swallowed the contents. It was cheap but did the trick.
Fuck it, he thought again, taking another drink, then another.
He finished the first bottle in just under an hour.
He then retrieved the second one.
Three days later, Gregory was still drunk and in bed. At one point, his phone vibrated next to him, and as he reached for it, he noticed another network of webbing draped along the ceiling. They weren’t old, random strands, either—they formed an intricate and vast hammock of netting that swayed languidly over his head.
Groaning, he picked up the phone. A message from the property manager: HI GREGORY. JUST WRITING TO ASK IF YOU’VE SEEN GOLDIE. SHE RAN AWAY YESTERDAY. IF YOU SEE HER, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! THANK YOU!
Goldie was the property manager’s dog—one of those hairless, yelpy things that always seemed to be on the brink of hysteria.
He noticed another text from Miriam, his business partner at the coffeeshop: WILL YOU BE IN TODAY? JUST ASKING BECAUSE WE HAVE A MEETING WITH THE ROASTER AT 3. LEMME KNOW.
It was now four o’clock.
Although he knew he was in no condition to talk about the upcoming release of their holiday blends, he still felt a pang of guilt. Miriam had bailed him out a lot this year, even practically carrying him to detox. She was reliable and smart and could easily handle the coffeeshop without him.
And lately, she had managed the business herself.
Gregory tossed the phone to the floor and groaned again.
He was thirsty and had to piss but couldn’t move. Not right now.
It seemed like every subtle movement sent waves of agony through his entire body. So, he continued to lie still and closed his eyes, trying to will the constant throbbing in his head to go away. It didn’t work. Nothing worked anymore.
Sighing uneasily, he began to turn to his side when he felt a cool flutter against his forearm, then along his bare legs. Not quite a tickle, but persistent. He thought about getting up and checking what it was, but instead, he was dragged into a sodden sleep.
Time passed—minute followed minute, hour followed hour.
Gregory sat at the kitchen table, taking small sips of water, alternating with larger gulps of wine. His head continued to throb, and his stomach growled with nagging hunger. He realized he hadn’t eaten anything in over a day and a half. With some effort, he tossed a bowl of instant noodles into the microwave, but when he attempted to eat, he immediately started to gag and abandoned the bowl on the counter. He settled on a handful of saltine crackers, washing the mush down with the dregs of his wine.
What am I going to do? he thought. When is it going to hurt less?
The pressure in the apartment was palpable. He could feel it growing stronger, as if he were in a tank filled with water, slowly sinking. A boiling sense of dread gripped every pore, every limb, every thought that raced through his brain.
And these damned spiderwebs! It seemed like wherever he looked, they were hanging down everywhere. When I feel better, he told himself, I’ll ask Mr. Garrett to spray the place.
As he continued sitting at the table, he felt his eyelids growing heavy and his head began to loll. Suddenly, his phone vibrated beside his arm.
He answered it without thinking.
“Ello?” he mumbled.
“Gregory!” a faint voice said, like it was speaking through a wind tunnel. “Is that you?”
Closing his eyes, Gregory held the phone out in front of him, debating whether he should end the call.
“Yes, Mr. Garrett. Sorry I didn’t write back earlier. I haven’t been feeling good.” His voice sounded hoarse and gummy with drink, and his tongue tasted like something that had been used to line a cat box.
“Did you get my message about Goldie?”
“Um, yeah, I did. Sorry to hear about that. Have you found her?”
“Nope, sure haven’t. I know she was in the apartment when I went to the store and the doors were all locked, so I know she just didn’t walk out. I’m afraid she may have fallen down the chute.”
Gregory rubbed his stubbled face. His headache seemed to have intensified. He didn’t want to talk about the dumbwaiter, but the words slipped out before he knew what he was doing. “Speaking of that, the plywood came off the wall again. It’s creating a draft in here.”
A pause on the other end made Gregory think Mr. Garrett had hung up. But finally, the old man cleared his throat and said, “Okay, I’ll stop by tomorrow, or maybe later today. I’m just really worried about Goldie.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Gregory said, his voice sharpening. He didn’t want to see the man today, not in this condition. “If I see or hear her, I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you. I’m really at a loss here.”
“I hope you find her soon.”
Gregory ended the call before the property manager could say anything else.
He remained at the table for several more minutes, wondering what to do next. The room was quiet, except for the refrigerator and its insectile buzzing. It sounded like it was coming to life, inching its way towards him, and he grew increasingly frightened of it.
He finally pushed himself away from the table, grabbed his wine and stumbled into the living room. As soon as he plopped down on the couch, he noticed the plywood lying on the floor again. He stared at the dumbwaiter with a conflicting mix of boredom and curiosity. Could that stupid dog actually have fallen in?
If I jumped down it, where would I go?
He assumed the chute led to the basement or wherever the original kitchen was located. But what if this thing dropped into a secret portal that could transport him somewhere else? Someplace far away?
Gregory stood up and stumbled over to the gap. Stale air sifted out and brushed across his face. Holding his breath, he picked up the board and forced the screws back into the warped holes. The plywood was loose but covered the gap… for now.
“Goodbye, Goldie,” he said to himself and giggled. He then walked back over to the couch, poured the remains of the latest bottle into his glass, and took a drink.
When he awoke again, he groped for the bedside table, but instead of finding the lamp, his fingers struck the wall. At the moment they did, Gregory became aware that his head was cocked at a strange and painful angle.
Groaning, he slowly straightened himself.
Light began to seep through the thin blinds, and lackluster shadows clustered in the corners of the bedroom like bats that hadn’t gotten enough to eat.
As he wondered how he’d returned to his bed, he stared up at the ceiling with disbelief. The area was almost completely covered by a canopy of webbing now. It seemed like it had multiplied in just hours. He could even make out specks of flies and other bugs trapped within the layered meshing.
How many spiders would it take to do all of this?
A random and sudden memory came to him right then—he was a kid, maybe eight or nine years old, and had gone fishing with his father. Having never fished before, the boy was more interested staring up at the clouds than learning how to attach a worm onto a hook. As his dad patiently prepared his pole, Gregory began to assign forms to the clouds—one lingering cloud was a leaping horse, another a fat pig.
He noticed an elongated string of clouds that were barely connected and stretched across the expanse of sky.
“Dad, look!” the boy cried. “That one looks like a giant cobweb. Do you see it, too?”
His father took off his sun-faded ball cap and squinted. Chewing on the wiry, dark whiskers along the side of his mouth, the man croaked, “I sure do, Greg! It’s the biggest cobweb I’ve ever seen! Can you imagine the size of the spider that could spin something like that?”
Now, Gregory stared up at this inexplicably vast network of webbing and pretended it was a cluster of clouds until the thought became dizzying. He closed his eyes and took in several deep breaths, trying to convince himself that he didn’t have any worries in the world. He felt wonderful and loved. He was in total control of his life.
In fact, he…
…blacked out then. For how long he didn’t know. But when his mind swam back into itself, he began sputtering. He felt like something solid was lodged in his throat. Hacking out a series of panicked hiccups, he tried turning to his side but discovered he couldn’t move.
At first, he thought the bedsheets had somehow wound around his legs, but whatever bound him was sticky and unyielding.
“What the hell!” he warbled, shocked at what he saw. He was cocooned inside a giant web. Hundreds of individual thin strands pulled and tugged at his skin.
Although he tried to pick the webbing from his hands, the fibers had filled his palms and woven between his fingers, making the act impossible. As he struggled, a terrible sound of cords or ropes tightening and constricting filled the room.
“Help!” he cried. “Help me, please!”
Panick growing, Gregory shot a glimpse towards the living room and noticed the plywood had been ripped from the wall again. Pieces of it were scattered around the floor.
He heard a rustling from below followed by a series of clicking noises.
As he writhed, he felt the slight pressure of his comforter being pulled towards the end of the bed, and he saw several thin, hairy legs push themselves upward.
He tried to scream, but his throat locked.
Slowly… methodically… a giant spider crawled onto the bed.
Slightly larger than a mid-sized dog, the spider seemed familiar from a nightmare. The mattress buckled underneath its weight.
At first, Gregory thought he was hallucinating, but despite blinking and willing it to be gone, this thing didn’t disappear.
“Get away!” Gregory sputtered. “Get out of here!”
In response, the spider made several clicking noises. They sounded like what Gregory imagined a gun sounded like when you pulled back the trigger.
Or the sound of bones snapping.
Or the predatory song of something that shouldn’t exist but does—the song of a real life monster.
As it crawled closer, Gregory could see that its body was bristly blackish-brown, with tiny hairs standing out at its legs. Its eyes, like fake rubies, stared dully at him. Two fangs stuck out of its mouth like curved vampire teeth and dripped clear liquid onto the comforter.
“Help!” Gregory screamed again. “Somebody please help me!”
The spider stopped suddenly, its listless doll’s eyes regarding him over a mound of blankets. For a moment, Gregory hoped it was going to turn around and retreat back into the dumbwaiter. But then the creature’s fangs began clicking together angrily before it rose up on its rear legs. As its mouth opened, its rank breath, a stink of bitter spices and rotting meat, made an assault.
Gregory heard a series of rapid clicks as the comforter pulled away from him even further. One smaller spider, then another, scampered onto the bed and joined their mother. Each one was about the size of a large rat, a rat with eight legs pawing blindly at the air. Their dark, curved fangs glistened, wet.
As Gregory opened his mouth to scream, one of the mother’s legs lunged forward and pawed into his mouth. Rough, gruesome bristles caressed his teeth and tongue. The eager babies mewed.
Without thinking, Gregory bit down on the mother’s leg. The end scraped along his tongue before his teeth severed it in half. Blood spewed from the corners of Gregory’s mouth, and he retched. The spider lifted herself over him again, her eyes measuring him with calm, predatory patience.
Finally, they all pounced.
Gregory felt something sharp puncture the side of his neck and released a gargled cry, but all he could hear was the sound of hungry things clicking madly in his skull. Within seconds, he could no longer breathe, and he felt many legs claw into his body.
And as the spiders feasted, Gregory’s phone vibrated on the kitchen table.
And outside, right below his bedroom window, a boy who lived with his mother on the fourth floor crouched between two dumpsters, hastily smoking a mangled joint.
At first, he heard strange noises coming from one of the second-floor apartments, and when he peered upward, he saw something huge and strange stare back at him from a window—a monstrous silhouette that filled the entire space.
The boy ground the nub of the joint against the building and muttered, “What the hell is that?”
It’s the weed, he told himself. You’re freaking out.
However, something inside compelled his legs not just to walk out of the alley but to run as fast as he could. And as he ran, he didn’t dare turn around even when behind him he heard glass shatter, then several cars screeching to a halt and a choir of horrified screams.
The boy continued running, even as the scuttling of legs grew closer and the sunlight was suddenly blocked by impossible shadows.
Want another gripping story by Shawn Montgomery? Read the thematically related stories in the Hell is for Children trilogy, “Burn the Witch” in Horrific Scribes, May 2025, “When I Come Back” in Horrific Scribes, September 2025, and “The Tree People” in Horrific Scribes, January 2026.