The Forest of A Thousand Legs | CreepCast

42:18That's the universal punch card system. On the 10th purchase, you get a free one. You get the free shakes. The free fries. Coffee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then she lifted the glass, snatched the spider up, and stuffed it into her mouth.

42:37That's the rest of the punch card. That is a you do not pass code. You do not collect 200. You just hit the rest of them. I like to imagine he had his phone in his hand. He was like calling for like Chinese takeout. And he says, all right, so you're full. He puts it back up on the phone rack. okay none of that you know what i'll just go get it myself honey no reason to order it and he never comes back at the same time though i hate to say this but that that would kind of that would kind of turn me on a little bit if i'm being honest just a little bit just just a hair what just just a spider's hair length if my lady if my if my lady was like i am deathly afraid and she fucking picked it up and ate it i would be like that is fucking kind of badass first of all disgusting but that sounds like something i would say um second of all there is nothing attractive about her putting a spider in her mouth i just i have got to disagree she's got that v for vedetta thing going on right now you know i mean gi jane bald ass head eating that stuff i didn't see it not fully but i stood frozen in terror and watched the muscles in her badly shaved head tense and relax as her jaw worked away, crunching at those hardened legs.

43:54God, sounds were bad enough, but when she was done, she looked over her shoulder at me and smiled and her teeth were smeared green and black with little bits of leg and Kaiden still stuck between the gums. Oh. I uh I don't know if I like that I also don't like that that's kind of a no go for any person if you have a big bowl of pasta spaghetti and you're chewing down on it ain't no fucking reason you should be smiling with all that sauce you know what I mean yeah she's gone mentally gone I'm gonna take a couple liberties and step away and like I said punch the rest of them be like okay well I don't know I need to feel better I'm gonna hold this till I feel better.

44:44I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but now I knew why I'd felt so different around her since she'd come back. I was afraid of her. Like a toy? Really? What made you think of that? Like a kid around an abusive parent. I just didn't know what I was going to get. There was always this energy in the room that had me on edge. I'd sit there watching TV, but I wasn't really watching. Couldn't have told you what was on half the time. Instead, every ounce of my being was focused on her. Every breath, every motion. When she got up to use the toilet, I watched her intensely to see what she was going to do.

45:24The fact that she rarely did anything except carry on as normal was all the more unsettling because I knew something was wrong and I couldn't stop remembering the way she laughed with that thing under the glass. uh let me i need to find kayla's keys i'll be back give me a second while he's gone that would be kind of unsettling having a uh having a girl knowing that she just ate a spider and you're all freaked out elevated heart rate and the only thing you're not really looking at the tv you're watching her she's like getting up to go take a shit you're like watching her walk away and all you hear in your all you hear in your left ear is just men men men men men men men men men

46:04men men men men men men men men men men men men men men men men men men men men men men

46:19that'd be what if you watched it the whole time here blown up the bathroom i did this girl one time she's like where's your bathroom it was right behind us i had a couch in the living room and it was i mean right there and i had me her my buddy and early he's like my roommate we're sitting there we were watching i think uh i don't know some daniel day lewis film who fucking last mohicans or some shit i was like what the i don't know oh no she was dropping like mad bombs this bad toilet those bad porcelain farts where it's like like all just like ricocheting off every fiber of that porcelain bowl my roommate was like god damn and she comes back out and she was like uh did you hear that well hell yeah yeah we heard it she's like yeah i was trying to put on a show for you and that was the last time i associated with that girl that was not a good time i was trying to put on a show for y 'all what a time she had a pretty smile though so it wasn't that good never mind oh damn this coke diet coke i'll tell you i when i was a when i was a younger man did not care for diet coke now oh you'd have to pry it for my hands a nice cold can of diet coke oh shit oh yeah oh yeah give me those chemicals the hills in this there's a aspartame baby Okay, what were you doing?

47:53I was just chatting with them while you were gone, so they were in dead air. Well, I found the key, so apologies for that. Anyway. No problem. Nights were bad. A lot of the time I'd wake and get the feeling she'd just been watching me. But she was usually fast asleep, or at least that's how it looked. Sometimes there were furtive movements, like she just rolled over. I got used to it. Thought it was probably just in my head. But then one night I woke up and she was right there, face inches away from mine. I cried out, couldn't help it. Shuffled backwards while trying to avoid touching her, wound up falling off the bed.

48:31When I looked up from the floor, she had a completely blank expression. She was just looking at me like a cat, watching a fly. What are you doing? Cried out, unable to stop the irritation from bleeding into my voice. She shrugged. Just watching.

48:50Then she rolled over like nothing had happened. That night I slept on the sofa. She didn't ask why. Didn't say a word as I grabbed my things and left the bedroom. I wasn't sure I would manage to fall asleep after that, but I did. When I woke up, I had cobwebs in my hair. I was lucky if I slept more than a few hours a night after that. It came pitfully, if at all. I woke up too many times to the feeling of something tickling my face and chest. a sensation like someone running a feather over me. Every time I'd come to in a panic, but I never found anything except nearly invisible silk clinging to my skin.

49:26Life without sleep was difficult, and I struggled to hide my dislike for Lily. Over time, our habits and routines diverged even further apart. I stopped going upstairs almost entirely, just didn't need to. I had work and the sofa and the kitchen, and the days when I came back and barely saw Lily at all were fine by me. I preferred being away from her. Something that kind of broke my heart, if I'm honest. There were times I didn't want to reach out, but looking at her gave me the funniest feeling in my stomach. I didn't want to change things. Didn't want to get closer. If anything, I wanted to run away.

50:05And I don't mean that I wanted to flee my life and adult responsibilities in some abstract way. I mean, I felt a powerful urge to quite literally run away from her. It was horrible feeling that way about my wife, and just trying to understand those emotions was enough to give me a headache most days. I became real forgetful during this time, and it was a long time before I'd realized I'd forgotten to pay for the repairs to the wall. I think it slipped my mind. Emphasis on think, because I don't remember what I have and haven't forgotten. I just nailed some plywood over and left it and three months later, one day, out of the blue, it occurred to me I should probably have done something more about it.

50:46I did find a toolkit in the kitchen that wasn't mine. I might have called someone out for a quote. I don't know. But once I remembered that I'd never actually fixed the hole, I was filled with this shame and embarrassment and I decided the best thing to do was to face it head on and go apologize to my neighbor. okay finding the toolkit and thinking he called someone out is this spider just killing people uh i can't tell if it's the spider or if it's just the woman who i think might be becoming a spider i'm unsure it's hard to say or is she controlling spiders like willard who controlled rats remember that oh yeah i do remember that how how spider-like does your wife have to become before you leave her i don't know i mean if i i because you're are you saying that are you are you saying that she's also growing new limbs and stuff or are you saying that she's just like literally well maybe no physical change an extra limb i think i'd be kind of stoked on like if my wife had four arms like she was goro that'd be kind of cool right that would be kind of sick and she had like four it'd be kind of i don't know i mean like honestly if she was shitting webs like that would be that would be for me i'd be like we gotta we gotta cut that out i just want to see a bear asshole all day shitting webs like that i don't know you know what i mean i would agree can you give me the cookies the extra set of arms could be cool though but i feel like four eyes no no i feel like the extra eyes would be a no-go as well i don't know i could i could see a world where i would i would be into it you'd be down for that if they were humanized though not the not like black spider eyes yeah yeah what if like what if uh she gets like these little mandible like pinch her mouth i mean come on hey what's that what's that pincher done yeah i mean yeah i like a little there he is i like a little tug and poke why not come on i said just bite a little bit there just pinch just a little bit oh just a bit that's what i thought all right i never knew a lot about the guy he was an older man who liked his football that had a nose like a tomato and spent most nights in the pub i knew he lived alone though and when I knocked his door and there was no answer, it wasn't too strange.

52:57At least, it didn't seem out of the ordinary until I went back inside my house and heard footsteps on the other side of the wall. So I went back and I knocked a couple more times, figuring he maybe hadn't heard me, but there was still no answer. I found this weird. He didn't seem like the kind of guy who'd avoid a neighbor he didn't like. He'd just open the door and tell you to screw off. I went back and looked, but couldn't see anything through his windows. and all I could see looking through his letterbox was a gray sheet across the opening. When my fingers came away covered in a sticky thread, I had this terrible feeling in my stomach.

53:32I couldn't have possibly explained how, but I was convinced that Lily had done something. After all, it was him calling the police who'd gotten her into trouble, but it wasn't like I could kick his door down to check, and I wasn't going to go scrambling through any half-open windows. Fortunately, we shared a fence in the back garden. It was easy enough to jump, and from there I checked the windows on that side of the house. He left the kitchen blinds open, and at first what I saw baffled me. For a moment, I wondered if he was decorating because everything inside was covered by a thin translucent sheet.

54:10Buddy, don't think those are sheets. I don't think those are sheets, buddy. But I only had to pay close attention to realize that didn't make sense. when painting a ceiling you don't throw tarps over half drunk cups of coffee and plates of moldy food and the material that covered everything was cloudy and made of thread and obviously some kind of silk took a lot of effort to control the urge to just hop the fence back and pretend like i never saw a damn thing but if he needed some kind of help i knew i had to at least try braver man than me i would have just been like well he's dead i looked briefly at the stoop by the back door there was a lighter on the ground where someone had dropped it it was strangely conspicuous and made me think that whoever had left it there had done so in a hurry didn't make sense that someone would drop it there and not notice not unless they'd been otherwise occupied i picked it up and winced when it came from the floor with a sticky tearing sound.

55:13It was covered in barely visible silk threads. God, I wanted that back door to be locked. Couldn't think of anything worse than having to push ahead, but I tried the handle and it went down. The door popped open with barely any effort and I got a good look at how every last inch of that place was covered in pale cobwebs that got thicker and thicker as my eyes drifted deeper into the house. I couldn't help but wonder if there were strong enough to trap a person. Was my neighbor in there somewhere? Somebody was. I knew that much from the sounds I'd heard, but I couldn't see him in the kitchen. I wanted to cry out for him, maybe even go marching into the house and look for myself, but the hallway out of the kitchen had been turned into a web-line tunnel.

56:01No straight lines, just a dark, silky womb whose rounded funnel walls fluttered gently in the breeze. I stared into, I'm getting chills. I really am. I'm not. It's a great setup. All the visuals and stuff. I feel like I'm there in that room. It's fucking awesome. It's so well written. The detail's fantastic. I feel like, I feel everything he's wanting me to feel right now. I feel the uneasiness, the tension. I also don't want him to go into that room because then I'm going to have to read about it. Man. I stared intently into that dark. This reminds me, actually, did you ever watch that movie Kingdom of the Spiders?

56:41It was an old is one of those old B monster movies. And it had the original Captain Kirk. What's his name? William Shatner. William Shatner. It had William Shatner in it. And it's about this town in like the desert who a bunch of spiders start showing up and they're like tarantulas. But they're just super venomous and they live in colonies and they bite people and people die. And that's all they do. They don't get giant or anything. that they build these big webs and they'll web up bodies and i remember being a kid and being so terrified by these shots of like people bloodied and like wrapped up in webs it's a great visual i mean it's it's forever scary oh it's forever scary and the movie ends with one of the guys gets knocked out and he comes to and there's a few survivors who drug him into a room in town and they've like covered up all of the the air pockets and vents and stuff like that with clothes uh and the camera pans out and the entire town is underneath a giant web like this that's fun um and that's just how it ends and i was terrified of that for a long time and i'm getting flashbacks to that now that same feeling oh no straight lines just a dark silky womb whose rounded funnel walls fluttered gently in the breeze i stared intently into that darkness trying my best to see if there was the shape of a man's corpse cocooned somewhere in the pale white silk.

58:02I leaned forward, my head and shoulders just moving past the doorframe. When the blackness in the tunnel grew legs, dark carapace and segmented limbs explode.

58:18Ugh. Dark carapace and segmented limbs exploded towards me so fast it was almost in the kitchen before my heart had time to skip a beat. And then it stopped halfway into the room, standing perfectly still and brazen in the fading daylight. A bundle of legs the size of a horse. A real-life monster. I didn't move. God, it took me another minute just for my brain to process what I was looking at on a conscious level. My nervous system was quicker, sure. It was like a blanket of disgust and terrors thrown over me. My stomach plunged to the floor. my skin crawled. My heart felt like it was going to explode, but my actual mind was blank.

59:06White noise and static. The creature was huge. So big its legs could just about fit in the hallway behind it, but in the kitchen with a little more room, whose front limbs and mouthy feelers spread out like tendrils and gripped the doorway. It was ready to pounce on whatever had sent disturbances through its web. I've read that spiders can be a little like Venus flytraps. They won't always pounce on a single trigger. They need multiple hits. When I looked down at my feet, I saw that I'd taken just one step inside, but that was all it needed to be alerted. Now it had approached the initial alarm and, half blind, it waited for another hint of something trapped inside its web.

59:48I had to wonder was lifting my shoe count did I have a choice man this is so just the tension and the moment and also in all these giant spider movies the spiders always move so slow but having it be like the speed of a normal spider just that big ugh I couldn't stay there looking at the damn thing was bringing me closer and closer to full blown panic with every passing second I had to do something and I had to do it with some semblance of control i slid my foot backwards spider didn't move as soon as both feet were outside i let go of the door handle and felt something sticky detach from my palm it feels like an exaggeration to say that lightning moves slower oh my gosh what an awful way to start the paragraph dude what an evil way to start the paragraph oh

1:00:49I'm sure most of you have seen a nature documentary with one of those fish or maybe even a trapdoor spider and you thought oh shit that was quick but this thing maybe it was just because it was coming right at me I've never seen anything like it except for when videos get edited all of a sudden it was just there and before I knew it thick woolly paps were pinning me to the ground and I was looking into a pink slit of a mouth framed by fangs as long as my forearms. They moved independent of each other and something about the side of all those wheel spoke legs and segment of joints clumped together in its thorax sent my mind reeling.

1:01:33I said at the beginning of this that a lifetime of exposure had helped curb my arachnophobia but there are limits. I blacked out. When I woke up, it was dark all around me. I didn't know it at the time, but the belly of the beast was my neighbor's former living room. It wasn't actually pitch black, but it did take a few terrifying minutes for my eyes to adjust well enough just to be able to see my own body stuck and wriggling beneath me. I was wrapped up tight, and if you've ever heard the refrain that spider silk was stronger than steel and doubted it, well, trust me, it's true. A few thin threads doesn't give you a proper sense of it, but I was wrapped in what must have been a half inch of the stuff and felt like I was wearing 10 layers of lycra that was too small.

1:02:19There was a tiny bit of give, enough to let me move my fingers or toes or even bend a knee just a fraction, but that was it. It was horrifying. I'm not exactly claustrophobic either, for what it's worth, but given the circumstances, I found myself panicking as I tried to get some purchase. I kept thinking if I could get a finger hooked into it, then maybe I could start tearing away. I was desperate, but the more I found, the more I realized it was hopeless. The silk was elastic and strong and covered in a thick, stodgy glue that only further limited my movement as everything I did spread it around until it was gumming my legs and hands together.

1:02:59It wasn't until exhaustion caught up to me and I was forced to take a short break that I realized I wasn't alone. There was another cocoon beside me. My neighbor had been a big man in life, podgy with a large pot belly and a head like a thumb. But in the dim light of that room, he looked like a skeleton wrapped in skin that had been found half decayed in an ancient and forgotten tomb. So thin and desiccated, you could hook a finger under the tendons in his neck and jaws. I nearly cried when I realized I'd risked everything to save a dead man. But that wasn't actually true. The air in my thinking became apparent when he opened his eyes and glared at me with pure unbridled terror.

1:03:42He opened his mouth and I was convinced he was about to scream when instead he coughed and gagged and something wet and brown dribbled out of his mouth.

1:03:58It plopped down his chin and came to rest on the floor between us. It resembled a hairbane encased in bile and vomit, and I was momentarily stumped until I saw a thin brown leg unfurl from the tangled mess. It's okay. My neighbor's entire body relaxed, his eyes vacant and confused, as Lily knelt down beside me and stroked my head. Lily, you've got to get me. Shh. She said, pressing a single finger to my lips. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. I managed to wiggle my fingers into my pocket to hit another punch on the punch card.

1:04:39From the cocoon that's right here.

1:04:45I'm like, it's been a while since the stories bothered me this much. Honestly, I can't. This is how I remember feeling when we were reading Stolen Tongues with the part about the thing that was wearing the native guy's skin. uh oh yeah yeah yeah this is uh this is the same feeling only it's much longer i'll tell you what man christian wallace he knows how to phrase his stories uh and while i'm afraid of spiders in real life i didn't think a story about them would bother me uh but here we are and it's because of the way he says things oh behind her a shadow appeared it had legs as thick as my wrist and and they reached from the floor to the ceiling.

1:05:28It won't be much longer now, she added as the darkness behind her grew. Probably best just to keep you here. Lily, what the fuck? I told you they'd get bigger, she said, nodding towards the spider, my neighbor just spat onto the floor. He won't be any real help. She touched my neighbor's head, but he barely responded. She just gazed vacantly as she rolled him over so that he was facing away from me. You're such a clever animal, she added as she parted his hair. I was curious about just how much you miss. Something was clamped around the back of his head, a throbbing bulb of molted brown skin and hair.

1:06:08It looked like a spider without legs, a tick maybe? That's what I thought it was until my wife ran a finger playfully along its back, and my neighbor let out a gut-wrenching squeal of pain. slowly the shape seemed to wriggle and writhe and long thin legs emerged from beneath its body and i realized i was looking at a spider wrapped tight around his skull its legs buried beneath the skin and muscle of his scalp for a moment it playfully curled the leg in the air before returning to the incision and sliding it back into place every inch disappearing with a gruesome wet sound it displaced muscle and harem when it came to rest i realized just how misshapen his skull had become from all those legs wrapped tight around his head what the fuck do you ever find it weird that you can't remember what it looked like the thing came running out of her hand she asked before reaching over to stroke my head not that i want to claim any dignity right now uh but that is my bear trap when i said him throwing it on the ground was it gonna you know i mean something looks like I was right, but I'm also miserable, so who cares.

1:07:19Her hand came away covered in cobwebs. Something about her touch revolted me. It sent strange shivers coursing through my body. A deep primordial need to get away came over me. That strange revulsion all over again. The same one that had taunted me over and over again over the last few weeks. Without even meaning to, I found myself convulsing and panicking, my body trying to thrash violently, but with every limb constricted by that silk, I could do nothing except writhe around on the floor. I tried with everything I had to move my hands, to get some purchase on the silk and tear away at it to free myself, but it was no use.

1:08:01I could do nothing except glare at my wife and the enormous shadow behind her, the one that towered above us both, its great legs clustering around the floor, and ceiling. At some point I grabbed onto my trousers and clenched my fist and felt something small and hard, the lighter. I knew there was great risk in using it, but I had no choice. I managed to worm my hand into my pocket and find it with my fumbling fingers. My wife seemed oddly aware of what I was doing, and she seemed to tilt her head like a curious dog as I clenched my fist around the small object and used every ounce of willpower I had left to fight the violent seizures that wracked my body and thumbed the trigger.

1:08:42The web went up in flames immediately. Must have been the glue, but the flames exploded across the silk like they'd been soaked in kerosene. Before I even realized that it had weakened enough for me to free one arm, the tongues of fire were already spreading across the floor where they found my poor neighbor. The burning sensation that crawled across my legs and chest hurt like nothing I could imagine, but I was finally free. I rolled over and began to push myself up already desperately patting at my body to try and put out the flames when I looked around me my wife and the shape that followed her were gone for a moment I considered helping my neighbor but his body thrashed too violently and although his eyes were wide open spiders were pouring from his mouth and I could not summon the courage to take another step towards him all I could think of was escape the house was going up like a tinderbox it wasn't far to the kitchen but the fire had already beat me there.

1:09:37Smoke billowed upwards and, trapped by the ceiling, started to fill the air with choking sud. The only escape was the back door, and I stumbled towards it, but was stopped at the last moment by the side of my wife standing there. You really are such a fascinating spe - I barreled past her, but to my surprise, she offered no resistance. I merely emerged into the open air, my lungs gasping desperately for clean air as I collapsed onto long, unkempt grass. I looked over my shoulder and saw orange tongues of fire were already leaping out of the windows on the upper floor. Left uncontrolled, the fire would rage and consume the entire row of terrace houses.

1:10:16I felt a moment of remorse, but there were already sirens in the distance, so I knew someone had noticed and done the right thing, but it wasn't over. Lily was sitting on the fence. I don't know how she got there, but she looked completely undisturbed. Disturbed. I never once imagined that when that wind blew me into your home, I'd meet such an interesting pair of people. What a fun mind to sink my legs into. Really had no idea what I was going to find. Let her go! I have. I did months ago, as a matter of fact. There were some incapabilities and it just made sense to move homes. She pointed at me and smiled.

1:10:49I've enjoyed living inside your head quite a bit. Mmm. Mmm. That explains his forgetfulness, not remembering things and all that. Huh. Struggling to make sense of her words, but still somehow aware of their terrifying implications, I placed one hand on the back of my head and felt it. Felt her. The mere touch was enough to fill my mouth with a coppery taste, while my vision blurred at the edges. Something beneath my skin shifted and I felt a terrible pressure behind my eyes. I had to get rid of her, and I only knew of one weakness. Oh well. She said as she watched me fumble desperately for the lighter.

1:11:28Not every relationship has to last forever to be meaningful. I lit my hair on fire. My last memories were of heat and a sudden release of pressure. I couldn't possibly describe it to you. Not really. Something slid out of my skull and Lily waved me from the fence before she seemed to blink out of existence and then... Nothing. Not even darkness. Just total absence. I wouldn't regain a sense of self until the hospital several weeks later. So I'm assuming that Lily never made it out of therapy. She was always gone, and the spider just gave him the apparition of her. Yeah, I don't know. I'm like, well, let's finish it and see.

1:12:07There was nothing left of either house, but they did manage to control the fire before it spread to the others. I'm sure there was still some damage, and to this day I feel guilty about it. I think I was charged with arson. Maybe more. I have vague memories of being wheeled into a courtroom. The doctors have agonized over me for a long time, and one mentioned amateur trepanation. He said I must have practiced it on my wife, at least based on the body they found in my neighbor's house, but I can't really be sure of anything. I am forever dipping in and out of reality. Writing this down has been difficult.

1:12:43I'm not entirely aware where I am right now. One doctor told me I might make some kind of recovery if it was just a normal brain damage, but I've never seen anything like it, so I couldn't be sure. Feels like it's a different doctor every time I see them. Then again, I don't always recognize myself when I look in the mirror. Of course, that could just be the burns, but I reckon even then I still look a fair bit older than I should. There's one orderly who's stuck around long enough to get to know me. He knows me by name, smiles a lot when he sees me, talks to me about all sorts of things. He seems genuinely interested in me and what I remember.

1:13:24I called him in once to get rid of a spider that had spun a web on the window outside, and he did so with a warm smile. I told him I was deathly afraid of them, and he said he already knew that, but I shouldn't worry because he was going to keep an eye on me and make sure nothing bad happened. I'm glad he's around. Ever since he started working here, I haven't seen many of the nasty little things hanging around my room. I guess he's not that bothered by them. At least not if the cobwebs in his hair are anything to go by. What a fun ending.

1:13:56do you think the spiders are real or do you think they're just a manifestation in his mind i think the no i think they're real because it what started all was the windy day when one blew in and then got in her hair and he thought it pulled it out but she was actually infected by the spider that had burrowed into her brain and then his brain um and now they've gotten to either i guess the orderly has it because of the cobwebs in his hair or they're back in him The trepanation thing means that it like burrows into the skull. That's what the doctors suspect happened. That's what led to him like burning down the neighbor's house and stuff.

1:14:31So I think, I think at the very least, the spider that's in his brain is real. Maybe not the giant one in the house. And I don't think the visage of his wife was real, but. Yeah, I, the, her, her shaving her head and stuff makes me think that that's what she was trying to get the thing off. Yeah. The back of her head. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, well, I think she was, and that's what she's talking about spiders in the walls. Cause there was one in her head, but he was also under the influence somehow because if she had a shaved head and he didn't see it, um, that could be the dementia could be the thing he's forgetting.

1:15:09I think by that time he was already, or he was also infected. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think by that time he was already hooked. Yeah, for sure. Gosh, that was a great story though. That was very creepy. fantastic dude i i can't remember being that scared of a story in a while that was uh that was one too where i feel like the ending had a really fun payoff as well yeah which doesn't happen a lot no sometimes the ending and like the explanations kind of sours it but i feel like the spider in the brain thing is a good a good fit there and i like the neighbor and then like it's the obviously the webs everything webbed up and stuff like that i think that's all awesome I think it's all very well done.

1:15:48Okay. Well, excellent spider story. Christian Wallace link in the description. The goat. Be sure to check out his publications like with teeth and also the CH Wallace website. It's a ton of cool stories on there. With that, Hunter, are you ready to make it even worse? As I say, let's dip in. It's fun that we're doing another one too because the I'm very curious. I love the title of this one. The force of a thousand legs. Yeah. Having a double feature. It's going to be fun to see. Does this one irk you as much too? I'm curious if it's just, if now that we've read one, does this one also just, is it like, you know, pins and needles with how your approaches are already affected, you know, now it's going to hit even deeper.

1:16:29Maybe make everything worse, perhaps. Yeah. So this is by, this is a nine-year-old story by a user named Levinsky, who it seems they were pretty active in these online communities like no sleep and stuff like that but this is the only story at least that i see from this account they posted to no sleep uh and then they also posted to r slash creepy uh which i'm not sure if that's a story or not it's an off-site link um and then a lot of like creepy art and things like that so they're into the creepy but This seems to be their one no sleep story. So, but it has 2.7 thousand upvotes. So to have one story that does that well is pretty impressive.

1:17:15So we're going to see how it goes. I feel like my heart rate's elevated right now. I'm just really scared. I know, dude, you're primed. All right, obviously, Levinsky will be, and the original story will be linked in the description. Be sure to show them some love. And if it's good, Levinsky, hopefully you decide to write again. I'm already so scared. All right, Hunter, are you ready? Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. Little Lucy Lockett ran from her daddy's frying pan. The force of a thousand legs killed her and then laid their eggs. Goddamn. I don't know if that's a fun poem at the beginning, huh?

1:17:51To the point, I appreciate that. That's a jump rope run. My classmates used to sing on the playground in elementary school. It's really screwed up that they sing that because Lucy Lockhart was a real person we attended school with. She vanished when we were in second grade, so we must have been around seven years old. The rhyme was loosely based in truth, in that the official story was that Lucy Lockhart did in fact vanish into the Lockhart wood 50 yards from her father Robert's house, but he wasn't chasing after her brandishing a frying pan to beat her with. I was too young at the time to understand what was happening, and it wasn't until much later that my mom actually explained it to me.

1:18:29It wasn't a particularly shocking story, just sad. I remember the day Lucy went missing. At least the first day she didn't come to school. It was Monday. She went missing the Friday before. My mother told me it was a few days before Lucy's seventh birthday and that Lucy had asked her father if she could have a birthday party at the house. I remembered that. Lucy and I had been in the same group of friends and I remembered her telling us that she was going to ask her dad about having a birthday sleepover. I especially remember being annoyed that she wanted it to be a sleepover because I was the only boy in the group and was never allowed to sleep over with them.

1:19:06I was still excited at the prospect of a party though, as we all were, because we knew her father, Robert Lockhart Jr., was a retired entomologist, or we just called him the bug man, and had lots of pretty preserved specimens like butterflies and beetles and cases that Lucy would sometimes spring in for show and tell. Anyway, according to my mother, Lucy asked her father if she could have a sleepover for her birthday, and he said no because she was going to spend her birthday at her mother's house while their house was being fumigated. It was a normal enough reason for a six-year-old to cry and storm out of the house, but running into the Lockhart Wood was a bad idea for any person of any age without the proper equipment.

1:19:47Here's the thing about the Lockhart Wood. Some people call it the forest of a thousand legs, presumably to make it sound creepier than it already is. It doesn't need help. There are roughly 4 ,000 species of spider in America, and the Lockhart Wood is a phenomenon on its own in that it's home to all of them. Not only that, but there are documented populations of some spiders previously thought endemic only to certain countries, such as the Goliath bird eater, a couple of funnel web spiders, and some species of peacock spiders. There's that myth that says you're never more than three feet from a spider at any given moment.

1:20:25In this forest, it's not a myth. It's filled to the brim with spiders. I think at this point, it goes without saying that if you're arachnophobic, the story is not for you. What is a peacock spider? I'm going to type this in and I'm going to immediately regret at it um because i know what the other two are oh i've seen these guys they're cute that's not scary the goliath bird eater though is fucking insane yeah have you seen pictures of people holding those things yeah they're like your entire chest crazy they're massive and then the funnel webs are like super venomous they're the most venomous spider in australia at least i think the world unless the Brazilian wonder is considered more venomous now.

1:21:08Yeah, peacocks are fine. Peacock spiders are cute. Jumping spiders are cute. And velvet spiders are cute. They don't bother me. I would have a pet one of those, I think. But yeah, the... Like I said, as long as the story doesn't mention any orb weavers, we're good. We'll be fine. I'll get through it. I'll be okay. because I'm stronger than my fear. My fear does not control me, I control it. The forest is naturally of great interest to biologists and arachnologists, but Lockhart Wood is private property, and restricted guided access to the forest was hard to come by even before Lucy Lockhart's disappearance.

1:21:50Afterwards, nobody could go in. Obviously, anyone could get into the forest if they wanted to, it's not fenced off or anything, but there's a steep fine if you're caught trespassing and nobody's exactly clamoring to delve into a forest full of venomous spiders anyway. You need the right kind of boots, clothes, gloves, first aid kits, and knowledge of the forest to step past the tree line. The most common spiders at the edge of the forest are jumping spiders, various wandering spiders, and orb weavers. Most people who emerge from the forest have a number of banana... I'm so freaked out from the previous story that just descriptions of these are bothering me now and i i i hate it so much i'm so freaked out right now

1:22:38we have banana spiders all the time around here there's they're also like a kind of or we have to check the ceiling stuff most people emerge from the forest have a number of banana spiders cling into their hair and jackets startled by the destruction of their webs if visitors are allowed deeper into the forest, the spiders get bigger and they lurk on the ground. According to my mother, Robert Lockhart Jr. lived with his father in that house for a long time. They were a father-son duo of entomologists from Alabama, but Robert Lockhart Sr. had a focus on arachnology. He had bought the house and the forest specifically for its spider population, which also made it super affordable, and he usually worked from home.

1:23:20Robert Lockhart Jr. did a lot of work at a university three towns over. He married a professor there who taught evolutionary biology, and the three of them lived in the elder Robert Lockhart's house until Robert Sr.'s sudden passing during a study on tarantula hawks. Lucy Lockhart was born a year later, and Robert Jr. was able to retire from teaching and live as a stay-at-home dad while Lucy's mother continued teaching at the university. He still worked collecting and preserving specimens, mostly butterflies and moths, and had reports published in the entomology scene, and very, very rarely led guided tours around parts of Lockhart Wood for a price.

1:23:59My mother only got to know Robert Jr. once Lucy and I became friends. She said he didn't talk about the forest very much. She got the feeling that he was afraid of it. When he and his wife divorced, my mom suspected part of their irreconcilable differences was Lockhart Wood. She never really pried into it, after all. She and Robert Jr. only spent time together because Lucy and I spent time together, although I remember hoping they would get married so that Lucy and I could be brother and sister. Robert Jr. hated the forest he owned and made sure that anybody who stepped foot in it was dressed and prepared for the occasion, which is part of the reason why my mother never believed he killed Lucy when he was the prime suspect in the investigation.

1:24:42When Lucy ran off into Lockhart Wood that evening, my mom said Robert Jr. gave chase without hesitation. socks, sweatpants, and a t-shirt. He must have received a dozen bites of varying severity the second he went in. He was in there for four hours. My mom was working a night shift at the hospital when he was brought in, delirious and swollen over. There was no telling how many bites he'd received, and to this day, my mother doesn't know how he survived. He needed antivenom that no hospitals in the United States could offer, and when he had dragged himself back home after desperately searching for Lucy in that forest, he could only self-administer so much.

1:25:20Maybe luck and a developed resistance was what saved him. He lost both legs below the knee, but he lived. From what my mom could gather in the weeks following Lucy's disappearance, the investigation was chaotic. Search teams entered the forest, but they never spanned at all. Two officers in the initial search team were bitten by what was most likely a Sydney funnel web spider and unfortunately both died. After all, the Sydney funnel web spider is otherwise found only in Australia. Don't have that antivenom at the ready here in the States. Anyway, the search of the forest lasted maybe a week before branching off elsewhere.

1:25:58My mom says they couldn't, maybe wouldn't, search the whole forest. More than one officer who searched Lockhart Wood left the forest and subsequently skipped town. Those who didn't leave might as well have. They don't get out much anymore. My mom doesn't want to know what they saw in there. Lucy never turned up. It didn't take long for suspicion to fall on her father before he was even discharged from the hospital. My mom says there was a point where he was handcuffed to his hospital bed, even though both of his legs had been amputated. For a while, she couldn't tell if he was totally lucid because he would spend hours sobbing.

1:26:33That forest got her. Those spiders got my baby girl there's no evidence to convict him of kidnapping or murder my mom and the parents of lucy's other friends mine were involved in the trial as witnesses and they all insisted that they never had any reason to believe robert jr was abusive towards lucy or that he would be driven herder i didn't know any of this at the time as my mom responsibly sheltered me from the details of lucy's disappearance but obviously some other kids we went to school with got wind of some information Hence the morbid jumpro prime. It upsets me a lot when I hear kids chaining it during recess.

1:27:10I was young and I missed Lucy very much. It's been 11 years since Lucy went missing. It doesn't really upset me anymore. It's just a sad mystery that I still think about sometimes. The group of friends that Lucy and I shared stayed close until middle school and then we all branched out a bit. I don't think any of us ever forgot about Lucy. I recently graduated high school, and the original group of us got together at a diner to discuss in amazement how we were all finally done with high school forever. At one point, I nudged my omelet around my plate and said absently, It's been years, but I still wish, man, I wish Lucy could have graduated with us, you know?

1:27:50My friend Stella leaned her shoulder into mine and knocked our mortar boards together with an understanding smile. Same here, bud, but she'd be proud of us for doing it. The conversation drifted elsewhere, but the poignant thought of Lucy stuck with me for a long while after that evening. It wasn't until the day before I went off for my freshman year at college that I told my mom I wanted to stop by the Lockhart house and sort of say goodbye to Lucy, if Robert Jr. would let me. Well? She shrugged over breakfast. I guess he couldn't hurt. You don't ever get over losing a child, but all things considered, he seems to be okay.

1:28:26He might oblige you. So later that afternoon, I drove across town towards that dark, looming forest that stretched into the sky on the horizon. I hadn't been to the Lockhart house in over a decade, but the sight of it instantly made me happy. I no longer mourned Lucy. I only cherished the brief time we knew each other as children, and I had lots of fond memories in that house. As I pulled into the gravel driveway, I saw the curtains in one of the front windows shift, so I knew someone was home. You might not want to let me in, but there was no harm in trying. I went up to the front porch steps and found a wooden hanging of a luna moth atorning the front door.

1:29:02It had no sign of grime or weathering, and the pale green paint still had its glossy finish, so I guessed it was fairly new. I didn't know what I expected from Robert Jr. Maybe that he was too far gone after the loss of Lucy, that he wouldn't bother decorating anything, but it had been more than ten years, and recovery is possible. I knocked and he answered a few moments later Browning curiously at me from the cap in the door Hey Mr. Lockhart I floundered a little stupidly because I hadn't planned on how I was going to talk to him I'm Aaron you know my mom Jane at the hospital you know it's funny you see how they have Levinsky like that in brackets yeah that's because on no sleep you cannot give the full name of a fictional character so originally this was posted with like a fake full name but you can't do that so they just inserted their username for the last name that's hilarious

1:30:02well you can't that's doxing you can't dox this person in the giant spider story tell me what a fake character's name is deleted deleted i don't care about the quality of writing or art or anything like that. Why is this? Their name is Butch Cassidy? God deleted! Yeah. The door eased open a bit more, his face relaxing with recognition. Jane's boy, yes. You were one of Lucy's little friends, weren't you? Come in, wipe your feet. I'm surprised you remember we were friends. I admit it, stepping inside and wiping my feet on the floor mat. Looked like a monarch butterfly. I remember all you kids. Robert Jr.

1:30:44said with a wave of his hand leading me inside his prosthetics clicked on the linoleum it was lucy you stella there was two little girls named hannah wasn't there you're the one that cried a lot because you never got to stay for sleepovers yes sir that was me you gay son

1:31:08you gay boy from the top rope are you gay immediately I then realized that Junior was actually Mr. Widemouth. Yeah, jump out the window and kill yourself. Don't be gay. Wow, Mr. Widemouth, you're way creepier than the spiders. Thank you. You're gay.

1:31:37I like the idea that Mr. Widemouth is like he's no longer homophobic. Like he simply just informs people that they are homosexual. Yeah. I don't know if he realizes, but you are gay. I just wanted to let you know. Really? Not even bisexual? Nope. 100 % gay. That's excellent Spanish, Mr. White Mouth. See. He's like six foot tall wearing like a bath robe. Like holding coffee. It was a startlingly straightforward question. tossed over his shoulder as I followed him into the house. There wasn't anything accusatory in his tone, though, so I said yes. He grunted. Knew you'd be fine to sleep over with the girls.

1:32:23Could have spared you a lot of whining and crying. Oh, so he was right. He was immediately right for the gay thing. It's funny. He took me past numerous framed bug specimens as we made our way to his living room. It was a big room, cluttered with bookshelves and work benches with papers strewn about. Dozens of terrariums of various sizes dotted the room and lined the wall like trophy cabinets, the only gap where the den opened into a kitchen. A bright desk lamp illuminated the whole room, and the light bounced off a magnifying visor, headset, and laptop screen. It looked like he had been dissecting a large beetle before I knocked on the door.

1:33:01It was good to see that his passion for bugs had been destroyed after losing his daughter to the Lockhart Wood. So what brings you here, Schooner? He asked, going into the kitchen to retrieve something from the fridge. Well, we graduated in May and I'm leaving for school tomorrow. And I just kind of, I mean, I still think about Lucy a lot, so. So I was wondering if you had kept any of her things over the years that I could see and sort of, you know, remember her by? If you're okay with that, sir. Robert Jr. came back over to me with a shrug and two beers. He said, Ain't much a little girl has to her name but a Hello Kitty bed sheet and beanie babies.

1:33:38Oh man, baby babies. I couldn't help but grin at the memory. That was always my go-to gift. I gave her a bunch of mine. What, you want them back or something? Off my startled look of chagrin, he chuckled and handed me the second beer. I'm messing with you, boy. The room's this way. He led me down a long, familiar hallway, down which Lucy and our friends and I had sprinted recklessly over a decade ago. I recognized a few framed insect specimens that we had knocked from the walls in our roughhousing fits. we went into lucy's bedroom at the end of the hall and it was virtually unchanged from how i remembered it was were still pale pink and decorated with pastel colored cross-stitch artwork made by lucy's late grandmother the canopy bed was neatly made the hello kitty bedding crisp and unfaded from years of disuse the shelves upon shelves of stuffed animals with an army of beanie babies gifted by me populating their own full shelf and surprisingly a long terrarium against the wall with an enormous black spider sitting motionless underneath a black light um before we get into the spider detail

1:34:47the there's something so heartbreaking in all these stories about like and it's true in real life too when you know a parent loses a kid and the room is left exactly the same way you know and it's understandable as to why but there's such a misery to like the the waiting for someone who never comes, you know? Yeah, no, it's a completely frozen time capsule that's just there, so you can't... I think it's a big part, too, basically so you don't lose the memory of them or who they were, you know? Or something so heartbreaking about a parent tending to an empty room, you know? 100%. I recognize that spider.

1:35:23No way, that's not... Robert Jr. flipped on the lights, which turned off the terrarium's blacklight. The massive spider retreated into a hide with the twitch of its long slender legs he grunted that's her what's he mean by that's her he said because i think that's the uh that's the the the i thought that was the spider or whatever what what i mean it is a spider what do you mean you think it's the spider lady legs was a type of huntsman that robert lockhart senior had discovered in the lockhart wood and kept for 10 years before Lucy was born. There were plenty of live specimens in the Lockhart house over the years, but Lady Legs was the only one that Lucy seemed to cherish as a pet.

1:36:07Robert Jr. had said in the past that some tarantulas can live to be 25 years old, but Lady Legs wasn't a tarantula. And if this was the same Lady Legs from that time, this would make her over 30 years old. Do huntsman spiders live that long? I asked incredulously, moving to the terrarium with a fascination I hadn't felt in years. Robert Jr. stood in the doorway with his arms crossed and an expression of distaste creasing his features as he looked at Lady. Nothing that we know of besides that one. She's even bigger than I remember. I murmured, my breath fogging up the glass as I tried to peer into the spider's hide at an angle, but I couldn't see her.

1:36:44As far as I can tell, her size depends on her enclosure. She won't get no bigger as long as she's in that tank. So do you think that there's like a single giant one of these spiders in the woods and that's what people are freaked out by yeah 100 also have you seen huntsman spiders before i uh when i was googling some of the things earlier i saw one it's crazy yeah they're terrifying they are super fast too and they uh they run at people a lot they'll like chase you outside like that they're awful i was talking to a a buddy of mine in australia and he was telling me about he was in his car one time and he flipped down the visor and one of those that was like bigger than his hand just landed on him.

1:37:27Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And those people are just okay with it. They're like, oh yeah, you know what happens? It's like, what kind of freak? What kind of animal are you? The golden orb, we were the thing that freaks me out. I was talking to him too. He's like, oh yeah, they're all over my parents' place. My parents have a garden and there's like hundreds of them. It's like, dude, I would drown. I would drown myself before I dealt with what you go through every day. That is absurd. okay you know earlier at the beginning of this video i said i'm a little arachnophobic maybe i'm just arachnophobic i think you might just have arachnophobia yeah yeah i think i'm just freaked out i think i'm a scared boy i saw lady legs move in the hide then turn my head to look out lucy's bedroom window it faced the deep gray green mass of lockhart wood i stood absently tracing my fingers through the condensation on the bottle in my hand lady came from the forest didn't she how big do they getting there?

1:38:24Robert Jr. didn't respond. I looked over at him. He was down in nearly his entire beer. He finished it with an angry sounding hiss and said finally, ungodly big. Anyway, take your time in here. Do what you want. Look at what you want. I'll be down the hole. Okay, thanks. As he started to leave, I remembered the drink in my hand and held it out to him awkwardly. Oh, hey, I'm not 21. Ain't nobody gonna snitch on you. He left the room and I hissed open the beer. I don't know how long I spent in there, meandering around fondly. Maybe an hour. Took a spider beanie baby off the shelf and held it as I looked around.

1:39:06I stood over the dresser, looking at the framed pictures on top of it. Most were of Lucy and her parents, a few of Lucy from toddlerhood to age seven, holding the gargantuan lady legs and her comparatively tiny hands. I was in a couple of pictures too. Group pictures of us and our other friends at birthday parties. Our messy little faces smeared with cake. I found an old elementary school binder from the first grade class Lucy and I had together where the first activity of every day was to make an entry in our journals following a single prompt given by the teacher and then draw a picture to go with it.

1:39:39Naturally, Lots of Lucy's entries were about Hello Kitty, playdates with me and our friends, and bugs. Some of them made me laugh, like her outrageously mangled spelling of the word centaur, and several entries about herself and lady legs as spider lady centaurs. After a while, I just stood at Lucy's window, looking out at Lockhart Wood as I finished my beer. I'm a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, so I was pretty buzzed. The force of a thousand legs never looked so eerie. The angle of the late afternoon sun didn't penetrate the darkened woods, but it glistened on countless spiderwebs suspended along the tree line, emphasizing how dark the forest was beyond that.

1:40:21It was strangely inviting, in a predatory way, like the lure of an anglerfish. Out it swallowed Lucy up. Movement outside the window caught my eye. I looked over and saw Robert Jr. standing under the carport facing the forest, downing another beer, a backpack hanging from his shoulder. He was dressed in different clothes than the flannel shirt and cutoffs he had been wearing when he left me inside. He was wearing a heavy jacket and a hat with a different set of prosthetics that had shoes. He looked like he was dressed for going into the forest. I left Lucy's room, crossed to the other end of the house, and threw the screen door off the kitchen.

1:41:00Robert Jr. didn't respond to the wooden rattle of the door banging shut. You're going in? it wasn't a question i was incredulous ain't been in there since i lost lucy i think it's about time before i go back one last time before i torch it the sun was hidden behind lockhart wood not quite set casting the house and us in shadows before i could stop myself i asked can i go with you i like this setup because it establishes so much like his expertise his the father's longing with it but also that he very very rarely ever took anyone so it's like this um and he hasn't been in it since lucy died so it's this very forlorn moment it's a very like special moment but it's also terrifying so it's like kind of covertly everything we've learned about him throughout the story has been building up to this moment of him letting someone go into the woods with him right to this day i'm not sure why i wanted to go with him maybe for a sense of adventure of danger that 18 year olds are attracted to and think they can survive anything maybe i had some stupid notion that we'd find Lucy in there, dead or alive.

1:42:04Maybe I just didn't want a guy who had lost his daughter the last time he was in those woods to go in for the first time since then, alone. It's dangerous in there, said Robert. It wasn't a no. I'd be with you, I said, dumb and optimistic, but in my defense, he let me go with him. Neither of us mentioned it, but I know he didn't want to go in those woods alone either. You don't need to be dressed right, was all he said, and the next thing I knew he was jamming a hat on my head, layering me in protective clothing a size too big and cramming my hands and feet into gloves and boots a size too small.

1:42:38Not a perfect fit but close enough. He said tucking my baggy pants legs into my boots. I had zipped the jacket most of the way but he yanked the zipper all the way up to my chin. It was my gear back when I was a little older than you when my daddy bought this place. He strapped a headlamp to my hat, did the same for himself and shrugged on a backpack that he had filled with a first aid kit and a cold pack for antivenom. I watched him put it all together, fascinated, as I nursed another beer. It was hard to believe he hadn't ventured into the forest in more than ten years. The speed and certainty with which he prepared everything was like that of someone who explored Lockhart Wood daily.

1:43:16He gave me a set of strict, reasonable rules, basically telling me not to leave his side and not to thrash around if I walked into a web, and to always watch my step even when I was wearing boots. And to watch my step even though I was wearing boots. I could change my mind at any time in the forest, so if I wanted to leave, he would guide me out of the forest. I sent a quick lie of a text to my mom, telling her that Robert Jr. had invited me to stay for dinner, and then zipped my phone into a breast pocket. By now, twilight was fading, the purple sky soon to turn and inky blue and we set off the trail leading into the forest was rough and overgrown from years of seeing no foot traffic but not completely hidden the first thing i did when i entered the forest was walk right into a web that robert jr had subtly avoided i started to flail instinctively but robert jr caught me with an arm across my chest saying don't thrash i said after he assured me the web didn't belong to anything venomous i carefully picked the web from my face and hair following him deeper into the wood.

1:44:19It was darker than I anticipated beneath the trees. There were a few spots of visible death in the trees, suffocated and deprived of sunlight under thick layers of web wrapped around them. But most of the forest looked healthy, supporting the spider population symbiotically. Robert Jr. and I switched on our headlamps pretty quickly when the scant moonlight didn't light our way sufficiently. I looked down at the ground, casting a wide circle of light at my feet, and immediately froze in place, my skin crawling horribly. Spiders the size of half dollars were scurrying away from my boots and droves.

1:44:54Not quite a swarm, but enough to be uncountable. You're right, son. Those ones ain't gonna hurt you. Robert Jr. hadn't looked back at me, but he must have heard me freeze behind him. You want me to take you back? Pride swelled higher than the fear in my chest, so I said, No, I'm fine. One of the spiders crawled slowly over my boot, its long legs probing curiously at my laces i wrenched my eyes away from the ground shook the spider off violently and pushed forward i've never been particularly arachnophobic but it was impossible not to feel itchy all over imagining hundreds upon hundreds of unseen eyes creeping into my protective clothing slipping down the collar of my shirt and edging along my scalp into my hair i just i got so cold with the description of the shirt collar uh the tiny spiders became less of a presence however when we came to a fork in the trail and robert jr dropped to a sudden crouch grabbing my sleeve and yanking me down with him look at this whispered his headlamp fixed on a spider not two feet away from us this here's a nasty one a spider the size of my hand stood strangely before us with two sets of thick hairy legs thrown in the air Oh, it's a Brazilian wandering spider.

1:46:08They do that. It might have looked silly if not for the vivid, violently red jaws on display pulsing angrily in our direction. Worse still, the spider continued to move, swaying gently with its rosy chalicera throbbing almost obscenely, inching infinitesimally closer with its side-to-side motions. Wide-eyed, I whispered back, What is it? Infuriated at the sound of my voice, the spider lunged closer. This time, I could see its fangs protruding from the red, quivering with rage and clinting with wetness. Brazilian wandering spider. Be fair, it looks like, but it can be hard to say without a closer look.

1:46:45Only live in South America, except for this place, you know. He unzipped two pockets and withdrew a large pair of gloves to slip over the ones he was already wearing. That might be the deadliest in the world. Instinctively, I shrank back, but then took hold of Robert Jr.'s jacket sleeve with popping eyes, when I saw him reach towards the spider. Don't! Spider struck at his two fingers with lightning speed and a force that made a sharp snapping sound pierce the dark woods around us. In the blink of an eye, it struck twice, a red-brown blur. Horrified, I tucked frantically at Robert Jr.'s sleeve.

1:47:21Relax, he said, pulling his hand back and showing me his intact glove. Hoss can't quite bite through these. The spider darted out of our joined headlamp beams and off the trail into the woods. robert jr removed his bulky second pair of gloves stowed them away can't do much delicate handling with gloves like that but anything else in those things will go right through um have it so brazilian wandering spiders they do this thing where they throw their front legs up and they like whip them towards you uh it's like a defensive posture i remember seeing a video of a dude camping and one of them did that and like chased him into his tent uh i i hate him i just looked up the i just looked up a picture of it it's fucking crazy yeah there's huge things going up and super venomous they actually uh there's if you ever heard old like legends of spiders getting shipped to the united states in bananas and like biting people that's the ones who the stories are about because they hide in banana clusters.

1:48:21He stood suddenly, leaving me crouched and trembling, clenching and unclenching my fist, unpleasantly aware of how thin my gloves were now. I stood slowly. My headlamp slid up the trees in front of me, where the bark seemed to shiver and shift with the traffic of smaller spiders oozing up and down the trunks. I turned my head to see where Robert Jr. was looking, and my light fell on his back several meters away as he moved down the left path in the fork. Wait! I squeaked, rushing after him. I stumbled over tree roots and ran haltingly, skidding awkwardly to step around more than one fat, lumbering tarantula as I made my way back to Robert Jr.'s elbow.

1:49:01Our headlamps bobbed in the darkness, and my gaze was drawn farther up where the lamp's beams lit up vast labyrinthian webs high overhead, where nothing on the ground could destroy them. blinting white gold in our light they shuddered in an imperceptible breeze this is going to be the golden orb weavers and i hate it i hate it so much okay good those webs are way better high up there i said with a breathless chuckle trying to shake off the anxiety from the brazilian wandering spider we won't walk into indy down here robert jr walked briskly barely acknowledging me with a grunt. While I looked all around me, casting my headlamps lights to and fro, Robert Jr.

1:49:42hardly moved his head, focusing steadily on the twisting path down which he led us. Occasionally, he would stop so abruptly that I would collide with his back and he would gaze up into the ever-thinketing treetops at the spiderwebs overhead, which were now so large and thick that massive sections of leaves had suffocated and died. I could see clusters of spiders creeping every which way in the stuff all more obscure movements shifted on the other side of the web so thick that i couldn't see what it was my depth perception was off in this environment what i can't uh i'm getting lightheaded thinking about maybe i have to take a breath good god i'm willing to admit i have a problem my depth perception was off in this environment What with the distance between myself and the webs and the number of different sizes of spiders I could see, everything looked bigger up there from where I was standing.

1:50:38Communal webs, said Robert Jr., pointing at the massive net of silk. Most spiders live alone, but some are social. Bunch of different spiders taking care of the same babies, sharing the same food. They must catch a lot of prey. I said, move my head limp over the vast web. It's huge. Wouldn't be surprised if they make a regular meal of birds. Squirrels too, maybe, if any wandering this far. I looked at him, bathing his stubble-shadowed face in yellow light and said slowly, That's kind of big for a spider, isn't it? Pea Blondie in South America has been known to eat birds. It's the biggest spider in the world, at least outside of its godforsaken forest.

1:51:16This place ain't like the rest of the world. He paused, muscle jumping in his jaw, then said, But they don't make webs. They live in burrows. So watch your step. I remember seeing a video one time because in some parts of the world, they'll harvest spiders like this to use the silk for stuff. And there was a. I remember a video I saw one time of these guys in Southeast Asia who harvest these spiders for a living. And they have these long poles and they would reach the poles up into the trees and get a bunch of them on the stick. And then they would pull the stick down and dump them all into a bag.

1:51:55and for the camera he opened the bag dude it's it is it is like a walmart bag full to the brim of these giant spiders crawling over each other i uh i don't care for that i i think about that video so off the way their legs were tangled on each other and they were all writhing and moving and yeah they're so their bodies are so fat and their legs are so skinny it's so okay i resisted the urge to clamp onto his arm like a child as i swept my headlamp over the edges of our path spiders littered the forest floor scurrying busily but the irregularly spaced holes along the path nestled between tree roots what made me nervous now the biggest holes looked like it could swallow my leg.

1:52:45We continued to walk, uninterrupted by webs for the most part, but there were a few low-built ones that I would walk into when I was staring off into the woods and Robert Jr. wouldn't tell me to duck. Unnerved as I was, I was starting to get used to the sensation, hardly jerking back when the sticky, feathered light string snuck up on me. My pulse would still spike when it happened, though, pounding loudly in my ears as I carefully brushed the webs from my face, but then Robert Jr. took us down a second fork in the path, and I distractedly collided with two webs of surprising density in a row.

1:53:19I finally focused on Robert Jr. ahead of me to complain about not warning me, and a tangle of silk lit up in my headlamp centimeters away, just in time for my face to crash through it. Even though it was my fault for not watching where I was going, I said testily, come on, Mr. Lockhart, at least give me a heads up. As I dragged my gloved hands down my face, raking the web from my skin, Robert Jr. said nothing. I looked up over his shoulder in front of me and saw why. The trail ahead was entirely choked in web, a glistening haze like morning fog stretching farther ahead. Shapes twitched within it, different from the shifting masses of hundreds of smaller spiders in the first communal webs we saw.

1:54:01these were heavy and singular with sharp angles plucking at individual lines of silk i couldn't quite make sense of what i was seeing something crunched under my boot i looked down at the wispy stringy gray floor brittle old bones of some animal i couldn't identify lay there among the bones lay the aged empty remains of a huge tarantulas skeleton and exoskeleton locked together in death. They fought, died, tangled with one another. Jesus. I said loudly, just as Robert Jr. breathed softly. Jesus. He wasn't looking. I feel sick. I feel like I'm going to gag. He wasn't looking down. He was looking directly up.

1:54:51I looked up too and froze. Our headlamps joined and lit up the webs that swallowed the understory, washing over the enormous spiders that moved within them. Things the size of fish bowls with fat, round abdomens and...

1:55:14I feel sick right now. I'm like... next week we're reading about snakes we gotta balance this out somewhere it's only fair at this point clusters of eyes reflected light back at us and the movement of their heavy bodies made meaty organic clicking noises

1:55:41These things weren't what Robert Jr. had commented on. The creature slowly descending from its web by a thread was. at first i thought it was a spider with a squirrel or a rat or something in its jaws but a small logical corner of my mind reminded me that that's not how spiders eat not even tarantulas who don't wrap their prey in silk the rodent appeared bisected as i couldn't see its back legs with ugly gray skin visible around its midsection like it had mange its back half was and possibly the swollen bulb of a spider. It looked like some gruesome mockery of a centaur, the limp torso of some parasitic rodent bursting forth from an unwitting host.

1:56:35There was no way that thing could be real, or if it was, it couldn't be alive. But the thing's Spinnerettes kept pumping a hardy silk line, two spindly back legs touching a delicate tips as it worked its way down, and the rodent's head twitched, its furry front legs extending, paws grasping. I saw its face, a squirrel with too many beady black eyes extending up the front of its head, blinking gumly down at us. I could see its long yellow teeth as its mouth lolled open. I was distantly aware of my body moving weakly, grasping Robert Jr.'s jacket sleeve and yanking on it. Movement in the corner of my eye somehow managed to pull my attention from the abomination above us.

1:57:20My eyes were drawn down to the edge of the trail on which we stood, and for a moment I thought the ground had dipped down an embankment and we were simply elevated on the path. But I soon saw that it was a massive hole in the ground, a burrow. I continued to tug mechanically on Robert Jr.'s arm. What the fuck? A face peered out from the burrow, ghostly pale against the darkness within, and seemed to drift up and out closer to us. It was a human face, too many eyes clustered across the bridge of its nose, glittering black and blinking slowly. It ducked its head, long dark hair hanging from its length tangles as a woman's bare moon-white torso emerged slowly from the hole in the ground.

1:58:08A hulking, hairy mass of a spider's abdomen the size of a Volkswagen Beetle followed, connected at her waist. Her eight branch-thick legs crunched in the leaf litter, audibly thumping with the weight. Robert Jr. and I staggered backwards, upsetting more spiderwebs in the underbush. the creature's legs were striped with white at their joints and i thought of lady legs back at robert jr's house and what he said about her species size in the wild ungodly big robert jr's thoughts were also back in his daughter's room because as his hand gripped my arm in return i heard him say lucy i knew as soon as it mentioned the like the squirrel that like things that die in here become spider hybrids that it was going to be his daughter but that is so messed up imagine losing your kid and you find them as like a spider thing out here my eyes flew back to the creature's face it's a natural addition of eyes surrounding the originals and as it tilted its head i recognized her too her mouth dropped open lower lip dripping with something too viscous to be saliva and her rail thin arm spasmed once before lifting up sending a painful jolt of electric fear at my spine her white long fingered hands took hold of the squirrel spider dangling between the two of us and herself the thing squeaked and convulsed its legs thrashing horribly and lucy brought it to her mouth i ran i thrashed my way blindly through web after web back the way we came i heard robert jr call my name unexpectedly close behind me and suddenly felt him crash into my back i hit the ground hard face first i barely had time to register the bright starburst of pain as my nose broke and began to bleed or the scattering of spiders millimeters in front of my eyes before Robert Jr.

2:00:01yanked my bodily back upright and whirled me around. I thought he was slapping me but realized he was swiping away spiders that I picked up as passengers from the ground. Don't you run off in here boy! Robert Jr. hissed in my face shaking me hard. Something else will kill you before! The enormous creature loomed behind him creeping down the trail after us. I started to yell, but Robert Jr. clapped his hand over my mouth, spinning to face her. He forced us into a sort of half-crouch, his body weighing me down to keep me from running again, and I stared with bulging eyes, struggling to breathe throughout my bleeding nose as Lucy bore down upon us.

2:00:38It's okay, Robert Jr. said, but he wasn't talking to me. I could feel him shaking against my back. It's okay, Lucy. You're okay. She came closer. The precise movements of her vast spider body in stark contrast against the limp, feeble movements of her human torso. Her face seemed alert, even with the six bleary eyes that looked infected in their unnaturalness, but her arms hung listlessly at her sides, her posture hunched. Venom, blood, saliva flowed slowed down her chin. All that remained of the squirrel spider. I could hear her breathing, see her pale throat throb as she swallowed. That's a good girl, baby, said Robert Jr., his voice low and soothing despite his violent trembling.

2:01:29Daddy didn't know you lived here, Lucy. We didn't know we'd see you here. You did such a good job here all by yourself, didn't you, baby? Daddy's proud of you. He was slowly inching us back as he spoke nonsense to the thing in front of us. The spider shifted minutely, almost moving after us, but not quite. Lucy's dark, wet mouth drooped open. In a voice that sounded like wind in the leaves, she hissed, Oh, man. That's so terrible. The idea of your poor daughter being stuck in this state for years. Robert Jr. laughed, wild and terrified in my ear, pulling me another step back, the palm of his hand still crushing my lips against my shattering teeth.

2:02:16That's right, baby. Daddy's here. Daddy didn't think he'd see y 'all grown up in the woods, huh, baby? Good girl, Lucy. She didn't move after us as we backed away, although her eyes followed us with laser focus. Again, her voice hoarse and vacant. That's right. Daddy's gonna take your friend back home, okay? You remember Aaron. I groaned behind his hand, sick with fear, as all eight of Lucy's eyes shifted onto me. She didn't say my name. Wildly in the back of my head, I wondered if she recognized any of the things Robert Jr. was saying to her, certain that she was all spider-like this, that the two words she'd said were empty repetitions preceding her final attack.

2:03:01But still, she stood motionless, watching our retreat. Betty's gonna take Aaron home. Is that okay? baby will you let me do that lucy she was silent for a long moment then good girl lucy we're going away good girl another long stretch of silence as we moved steadily away from her she still didn't follow merely watching us voice unprompted this time shook me to my core when it next cracked through the night.

2:03:39The noise Robert Jr. made was something of a strangled sob and a laugh. Yeah, baby. I'll come see you. I'll come see you again. Just let me take Aaron home and Daddy will come see you again. We were several meters away from her by now. I was sure we were nearing the bend and the fork in the trail we had taken. Slowly, Robert Jr. lowered his hand from my mouth and I gulped a deep, shaking breath. I can't get us out of here backwards, but I need you watching behind us. You hang on to me and I'll walk you out. You tell me if she follows, can you do that, son? Wide-eyed and unable to look away from Lucy's figure down the trail, I nodded.

2:04:24Yes, sir. Okay. Okay, careful now. His hand encircled my wrist tightly, and with a firm tug, he took us around the bend. I struggled to walk in reverse, my legs like rubber and my pulse roaring in my ears. Lucy didn't follow us once I lost sight of her. Robert Jr. navigated us back through the forest, avoiding all webs this time around. I don't know how long it took to get out of the woods. For all I knew, it took days, but eventually we broke through the tree line, and the unobstructed moonlight was blinding. I felt separate from my own body as I brushed harmless jumping spiders and orb weavers from my hat and jacket.

2:05:05Distantly, I heard Robert Jr. chuckling weakly. I turned around to look at Lockhart Wood, almost casually. I leaned over and threw up on the grass. A few yards away, Robert Jr. did just the same, coughing and laughing harder when he was done. Fuck! He gasped, hands on his face. I watched him stagger and fall, heaving onto his ass, giggling maniacally. Dazed, I went over to him and sat beside him on the grass, staring at the forest. I spat remnants of bile on the ground between my knees. I fumbled with my headlamp, turned it off, threw my hat aside. I peered at Robert Jr.'s tear-shrieked, laughing face, vaguely concerned.

2:05:50I can't tell if that's good laughter or bad laughter. Christ. He gasped, possibly hyperventilating. You and me both. Fuck. He pressed two fingers to his neck, checking his own pulse. What are you going to do now? Shit, Scooter, I don't know. Probably visit my daughter every now and then. Damn. Scrubbed his hands over his face, groaning deeply. My head swam. I flopped backwards, staring at the night sky. The stars look like little white spiderlings. I thought suddenly of my mother back at the house, and for whatever reason, all I could think to say was, Hey, so I was thinking you should give my mom a call sometime.

2:06:32She's not seeing anyone. I don't remember getting home that night. I don't remember getting settled on campus the next day, but I think I'm going to change my major to biology. I'd like to see Lucy again, and I think maybe a study in arachnology might be a good place to start. man what a wonderful way to end that it's weird it's horrifying but at the same time it's very sweet you know like it's like a very kind of like no I don't know I don't know how any of this is sweet it's a tragic yeah that the daughter like I don't know it didn't attack them it remembered who it was and then she said come see me she obviously has like some ribbed into her memory there but it's I don't know it's like cathartic in a really weird way it's horrifying because obviously the child has been I mean like transformed.

2:07:20Now that being said, do you think that it had anything to do with the spiders in the woods or do you think she was just this creature that was born to like change with her like you think so? Because she was talking about the centaur before. She was talking about the centaur before because she had that spider that her father had discovered in the woods. I see. The spider said that or the father said that the spider grows as big as the aquarium is. So in the woods they get ungodly big. So that's why Lucy had dreams of like the centaur spider and stuff, because she was with lady legs. And then she's like, Oh, we'll become spider centaurs, blah, blah, blah.

2:07:55So maybe that's like an idea. Yeah, but I don't know how that planted by the spider. How does that translate? How does that translate to it being a morphed creature, half spider, half, whatever, when she runs, I understand it. Like the same thing that happened to the squirrel, it creates like biology hybrids. I see. Okay. Like it turns, It turns whatever DNA it finds into like spider creatures, basically. A sad and heartwarming ending at the same time of like a girl being transformed into a creature. There's nothing heartwarming about that. You see your kid out there as the giant spider thing with the venom mouth and stuff like that.

2:08:29That is not heartwarming. Your daughter is now like Gargometh, the destroyer of worlds. It is a crazy, crazy monster. But there was a sense of like a cathartic feeling. I'm killing my kid. dad and then killing my kid yeah i don't know there was something there was something to it i don't think it's it's not it's not a happy ending i'm not saying that but i'm saying that it must be cathartic being like you get to talk to your kid again in whatever form uh it's kind of interesting also she's not just a brain dead like just monster she remembers you and has like a cognitive ability to speak even if it is like a fucking demon but i don't know that's if that was fun two great stories i'll be honest i was going into this being like spider stories can come off is kind of cheesy but i think both of these really really did both of these were great and they were they were scary in different ways like the first one was scary because the descriptions of like spiders in the home kind of thing and the second one was like a monstrous spiders i mean obviously there was monstrous spiders in the first one but the second one like the focus of the horror was like how big these things can get the unknown woods and stuff like that um they were both very well written i mean obviously we know christian wallace is a great writer but i'm I'm sad that Levinsky or Levzinsky, this is the only thing they posted to no sleep.

2:09:48If they're out there, please write more. That was fantastic. But both of those stories were great. Both of them were terrifying. I can't, this is like in the running for the most scared I've been. And I didn't think I'd be scared by reading about spiders, but here we are. So listen to you just like dry heave and be like, oh, was quite the trip for me. so I it was definitely a story that has deeply hit you to your core yeah it's hit me somewhere alright these are the kind of stories that I'm glad I read them they were terrifying never going to look at them again I'll never peek at them again yes yeah well guys that's our episode this week thank you for being a little spider with us and hanging off your web you know hopefully another spider euphemism that I can think of I do appreciate you guys listening on Apple podcast Spotify all the audio platforms if you haven't done it try checking it out next time I swear it's a lot of fun and be sure to give us a good rating there also thank you to our patrons who supported us today we appreciate you and if you want some extra content we are reading the chatting in the woods right after we're done with this recording so if you want to get in on that little extra sauce feel free otherwise until next time guys we will see you in the next one stay creeped we'll see you in the next one I just want everyone to know one of the top comments on that last story is damn is Lucy single which is not only insane but she's also seven so someone should probably call someone about that guy bye hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more no more no more no more hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more my wife's a spider Hit the road, Jack, hit the road, Jack And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more Hit the road, Jack And don't you come back no more My wife's a spider Hit the road, Jack, hit the road, Jack And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more Hit the road, Jack And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more Hit the road, Jack And don't you come back no more My wife's a spider Hit the road, Jack.

2:12:05Hit the road, Jack. And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more. Hit the road, Jack. And don't you come back no more. My wife's a spider. Hit the road, Jack. And don't you come back no more. I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go. A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only pure thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick! Avatar Fire and Ash, now streaming on Disney+.

2:12:49Rated PG-13.