Page 199 of Love at First Fright

A web caught across my face. I gagged, clawing it away, feeling the sticky silk cling to my fingers. Something scuttled across the back of my hand.

I screamed again. Shook my arm violently. It flew off into the darkness.

Another step.

More webs. Thicker now. They draped across my shoulders like spectral hands. I could feel them catching in my hair, wrapping around my throat.

A spider ran across my cheek.

I retched. Doubled over. Vomit burned up my oesophagus as I spat bile onto the stone floor. My whole body shook, sweat mixing with the rain still dripping from my clothes.

Bat. Think of Bat.

I straightened. Wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

The gap in the wall. Too narrow. Spiders everywhere. Unable to move.

Dad’s voice, distant and desperate: “Charlie! Charlie, where are you?”

But I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t scream. Just hyperventilating, covered in them, feeling them crawl into my mouth—

No.

I forced myself forward.

One step. Another. Through the curtains of web that stuck to my face, my arms, my chest. I could feel them now. Individual spiders, disturbed by my passage, running across my skin.

I sobbed. Kept moving.

Bat’s brown eyes. The way they crinkled when he laughed.

“You’re lovely, Charlie.”

The sarcophagus loomed before me, covered in so many webs it looked wrapped for burial. I grabbed the edge, feeling the cold stone beneath the silk.

And pushed.

It didn’t move.

“Come on!” I shoved harder, putting my whole weight behind it. “Move, you bastard!”

A massive spider—some species I didn’t recognise, hairy and dark—crawled onto my hand.

I screamed. A proper, throat-tearing scream that echoed through the crypt. I shook my hand violently but it clung on, its legs wrapping around my fingers.

I scraped it off against the sarcophagus edge. It fell away. Disappeared into the shadows.

Bat.

I gripped the sarcophagus again. Planted my feet. Pushed with everything I had.

It scraped across the stone floor. An inch. Two inches.

Revealing a dark hole beneath.

The secret entrance. Stone steps leading down into absolute blackness.

I stared at it, breathing hard, covered in webs and spider bites and my own vomit.