“Hey, you want to see something cool?”
This is a phrase that many teenagers hear before an avoidable tragedy and the alarm bells started ringing in the back of my head as soon as I heard it. But of course, being a teenager myself and eager to have a close friend since I was new to the neighborhood, I knew my response was going to be in the complete opposite of what it should have have been.
“Yes,” I replied. I tossed the basketball back to Greg and he took a graceful jumpshot that would have been a three pointer on an actual basketball court and not Greg’s driveway. The ball swished through the hoop barely touching the net itself.
Greg was nice and one of those kids that was effortlessly cool, not really making an effort or anything, but had the quiet confidence and engaging sense of humor that drew everyone in to like him. I would not expect that he was secretly a serial killer and wanted to show me the dark end of a tunnel or his knife collection or have me lick the end of a rifle barrel to see what it tasted like. I was fairly sure that Greg actually wanted to show me something cool.
“Come inside. It is in the bathroom. Nothing weird, I promise.” Greg quickly added with a laugh.
“Bathroom?” I asked.
“Yeah, I would like to say it is a pet, but my Dad says that you can’t keep these as pets. We have to leave it be.”
“Ew, is it like a big cockroach or something?” I laughed.
“No! This is a nice neighborhood dude. We don’t get roaches here. My dad is a doctor after all,” Greg laughed.
I knew that the neighborhood was nice. It was an upper-scale set of cul-de-sacs spread across a wide set of rolling green hills, intermittently speckled with old oaks and tall silver ash trees. Greg’s house was the only house in this corner of the development, and the lot backed into the national forest. I was slightly envious of Greg and his family. I lived in an apartment near the school, and it was cramped with only my mom and I.
“Raccoon then?” I said.
“You just have to see it before I explain, man. Trust me, it is pretty cool.” Greg opened the door leading from the garage into the expansive mud room, and waved me down a hallway to the laundry room.
“I thought you said bathroom?”
“I did. It is right here, past the dryer.” Greg pushed the door open, and flicked a light on. “It is nesting under the sink.”
“If it is a poisonous snake and I get bit, I will kick your ass,” I said with faked menace in my voice. Deep down, I knew Greg could wipe the floor with me as he had at least twenty pounds of muscle that I lacked.
“Shhh. If you spook it, it won’t come out.” Greg grabbed the handle of the door of the sink vanity and pulled it gently open.
I whispered, “Won’t the light bug it?”
“Doesn’t seem to bother it. I have been feeding it bits of lunch meat here and there, and think I have it trained to come out.”
The space was consuming, and I could not see much with the light that managed to penetrate the dark under the sink. It was counter to the bright light of the bathroom overheads, reflected again and again by the multiple mirrors. The space under the sink was oddly opposite the more I thought about it.
“Why is it so dark under there? The light in here should at least go a little further back?” I said.
“Yeah, my Dad said it is how they nest,” Greg nodded. “Here she is.”
A long slender filament of glass reached out from the dark, and bent gently to fold towards on the face of the vanity. It immediately dawned on me that it was like the leg of a bug, but made out of crystal instead of chitin.
Greg made a light clicking noise with his tongue, as if he was calling a horse. The same clicking noise came back from under the sink, and another couple legs slowly pulled the body out from it’s dark hiding spot. The body was larger than my clenched fists pressed together, and it was lethargic in its movement, slowly pulling each limb from underneath.
“Oh my god, it’s a spider,” I said dumbly.
“Yeah, not just any spider, this here is a real life baby Shatterspider. My dad says the fully grown ones can eat whole horses and cows.”
“Bullshit!”
“I swear, its true.”
The Shatterspider moved as if it was swimming, its gossamer limbs gently reaching out in different directions and moving back as if probing invisible surfaces around it. The body was like a mirror, both see through and reflective depending on the facet, its eyes, small flecks of brilliant diamond glowing like infinitesimal suns.
“Where did it come from?”
“Dad said that it was a stowaway from his last trip. It probably crawled off his bags and set up shop here in the bathroom to sleep until winter. He said it will move on after the summer is over.”
“Don’t things hibernate in the winter?”
“I don’t know. Just what my dad said. But that is not the cool part… its the web. Here, take my phone.” Greg pointed at the dark space under the sink. “Light it up.”
I flicked the flashlight app on and pointed it under the sink, wary to keep my face and hand away from the lethargic beast still lazily feeling the air around it. The light went under the sink and flickered back at my eyes for a moment. I could see the hallway behind us, the laundry room, then the hallway again, and another laundry room. In one part of the web, I caught sight of a dark forest, and glistening frosted over fibers of a web hanging above a frozen lake. The light from the flashlight alternated between them all likes panes of glass set at odd angles, reflecting the light in strange ways.
“What the hell?” My voice sounded far away from my own ears.
“Isn’t that wild?” Greg huffed quietly, trying to contain his excitement.
“My dad said that is why it is called a Shatterspider. It shatters the reality around it, like a black hole. It builds a web out of the fractures between realities. Those are all other places. Like this one, but different.”
“Those aren’t your hallway or your mudroom?”
“And not my lake or forest either.” Greg slapped me lightly on the back. “That is how the big ones catch prey. Dad said that if you ever walk down a hallway and turn to find another couple hallways all connected, there is a good chance you are in a Shatterspider web. Wild, huh?”
“He said it would be good for it to nest here, out of the way. Won’t accidentally catch Molly.” Greg winked. Molly was their family’s pet Boston Terrier.
“What if it won’t leave?”
“Oh it will. Dad was insistent that it would… and nothing to worry about. Shatterspiders don’t like this world.”
“Huh. If I wasn’t seeing it, I wouldn’t believe it,” I admitted.
“I knew you would be cool with it,” Greg said affirmingly.
“How come I have never heard of this sort of thing before?” I asked. “Shouldn’t this sort of thing be common knowledge?”
“Oh, uh…” Greg scratched his ear. “Yeah, so my dad has a special job. He is an explorer… of sorts?”
“Where does he go exploring to collect something like this accidentally!?” I asked incredulously. The Shatterspider, apparently bored and not being fed, started to amble its way back to its dark web under the sink.
Greg shrugged and took his phone back from my shaking hand. “Well… I guess I would have to show you the Den, then.”
“What’s in the Den?” My eyes were probably the size of silver dollars.
Greg grinned like a fool. “Stay for dinner?”