An Invasive Species

It sticks with you, that smell. The sickly sweetness of burnt flesh in the thick summer air.

Late July, 2011. I was hired to clear-cut a patch of swampland in a nearby town. Nothing too unusual. It’s what I do. God, how I wish now that the company contracting my team had been a little more forthcoming in their job description. They must have known about her. How could they not?

Once our work was done, the land would be bulldozed and paved over for a new suburban shopping center. And so the cycle of industry rumbles on.

The plot had already been drained, but puddles of sludgy excess still clung to recesses in the land, making the terrain a labyrinth of slippery mud traps tucked beneath ancient mossy trees and thorny brush. My team of twelve men and I took one look at the state of it and groaned. It was going to be a long job.

For the first few hours, the work itself was going about as smoothly as it could’ve. I’ve been operating machinery for over twenty years, acting as head on-site technician for ten of them. I’m no stranger to working with rough terrain, muddy water pooling into my work boots and spiny branches jabbing through my gloves. It comes with the territory.

Make no mistake, felling cypress trees is a pain in the neck. My guys were having a time of it trying to topple those ancient, towering giants of the Southern swamplands. But I’d take every one of those headaches back in a heartbeat now, given the hell I’ve been through since.

I was discussing our route plan with my right hand man, Dan, when a crack echoed across the worksite. One particularly dead termite-ridden trunk slid down at an unpredictable angle, nearly taking out one of our brush hogs and its operator. Thankfully, it just barely grazed the front of the machine. That massive husk of wood toppled into a nearby pool of murky water with a deafening crash, thoroughly dousing us all in pure essence of swamp.

I quickly identified the catalyst for that particular disaster, Cam, the newbie on the team. He couldn’t have been older than his early twenties, a well-meaning but totally clueless kid. I had hired Cam for his can-do attitude and infectious spirit. In some ways, he reminded me a little of myself at his age, though I’d never thought to tell the kid so. Now, he stood frozen in place, hardhat askew, staring at the hollow corpse of the fallen tree.

“Are you trying to get us killed?” I shouted, crossing the worksite to meet him.

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” Cam said, his voice uncharacteristically shaky. He swallowed, and tried again. “I don’t understand how it happened. I followed protocol and—”

“Clearly not well enough,” I said. “You nearly crushed one of my valuable employees. Safety regulations aren’t a game, son.” Cam stared at the ground, kicking a clump of moss with the toe of his boot.

“Folks’ lives are at stake every day here,” I added. “Understood?”

He nodded and gave a low “sorry, sir,” brushing chips of powdery wood from his shoulders. I opened my mouth to really let him have it, but thought better of it. It had been a long day for all of us already, and this was only his first strike. I let him off the hook with a warning.

As Cam turned to rejoin the rest of the crew, I caught sight of a dark, spiny clump that stood out against his orange reflective jacket. A large, wicked-looking spider. I didn’t recognize the species. It clung there with long, spindly striped legs, its fat yellow-and-black abdomen twitching back and forth. I brushed it off with a gloved hand, watching the thing hang there for a moment on its nearly invisible thread. After spinning in place for a heartbeat, it began to climb back up into the canopy.

Cam turned around with raised eyebrows, bracing for another barrage.

“Spider,” I said. He gave a nervous laugh and wandered off to help Hank and Luis uproot a stubborn sapling.

By the time the sun was setting behind the tree line, turning the sky a deep shade of marmalade, my crew had made a solid dent in the first zone slated for clearing.

As the guys were packing up, shutting down the brush cutters and excavator while chatting amongst themselves, Dan jogged up to me with his clipboard.

“We’ve got an issue, Jerry,” Dan said, tapping the map drawn up on his board. “The crew thinks our equipment ain’t suited for that big bald cypress by the north edge. It’s a stubborn old thing.”

By now, I was worn out from a full day of difficult terrain and mishaps. Sweat ran down my brow, stinging where it reached my eyes. I wiped it away with the back of my glove.

“Let’s send everyone home, then. No point keeping them today if we don’t have the tools.”

Dan agreed and together we sent the rest of the crew home for the night. One by one, the men removed their gear and trickled off down that dark woodland path, until it was just the two of us.

I envied the crew. I couldn’t wait to kick back on the couch with a cold can and some leftovers while watching home renovation shows till I passed out. But we had a job to do.

The sun hung low on the horizon, washing everything in a soft, dappled red. The cicadas had started up their singing. A barred owl gave its stuttering hoot from somewhere in the darkened woods. All around us, the worksite was a torn up mess of logs and red mud. The machinery sat still and limp, hunched over in the muck like the bodies of dormant beasts sated from their kill. It was time to go.

But first, the cypress. Dan led me to the ancient tree, spray can in hand to mark it for tomorrow’s cutting.

It was a magnificent thing. Stretching up to the heavens, far past any of its brethren in the clearing. Had there been an opening in its base, the two of us could have easily crawled inside with ample room to spare. Thick, knobby roots sprawled out like limbs, grasping the mud with an obstinance that was almost intimidating.

Dan kicked the tree hard. The branches didn’t even shake. He might as well have been kicking a boulder.

I walked up beside him. Removing my work gloves, I pressed my bare hand to the bark. It was cool and damp to the touch.

“No dry patches at all,” said Dan. “No give either. Sturdy as hell. It’s old, but it’s alive alright.”

He kicked the base of the tree again, just for good measure.

On the second kick, I felt a pinch on my neck, too sharp to be a mosquito. With a shout, I slapped at it, trying to throw off whatever had bitten me. A prickling sensation spread across fingers. Drawing my hand back, my eyes fixed on the culprit: a spider.

Including its oversized spiny legs, the thing filled my entire hand. Its body was large and elongated. Spotting those same banded yellow-and-black patterns stretching across its fat nickel-sized abdomen, I recognized it as the same species I’d seen on Cam’s back earlier. For some reason, I did not immediately shake the creature from my hand. I just stared at it, transfixed as one might be by an exotic flower or surreal work of art. It was oddly beautiful, I thought, in an alien sort of way.

“Whatcha got there?” Dan leaned over, inspecting. “Careful now, that’s one of those invader species. They’re saying those little devils are being planted all up and down the coast to weaken the resolve of the American man with their ancient hypnotic properties. It’s some big psyop from the foreign powers overseas. Look it up.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Dan was known for frequenting some questionable Facebook groups. He was always on about some new underground conspiracy, entertaining the crew with outlandish tales of ancient aliens or governmental cover-ups. Examining the massive spider clinging to my hand, I did suspect that Dan was right about the invasive species part. In all my years working in logging, I’d never come across anything like it.

Before I could respond, Dan smacked the spider from my palm. It landed in the dirt, where he crushed it into a pulp beneath the heel of his boot. It made me oddly sick, seeing black guts ooze out onto the soil, those strange striped legs curling in on themselves.

“Better off dead,” Dan said with a sharp laugh. My stomach churned unpleasantly. “Well, looks like we’ll need the big guns tomorrow. Shall we head home?”

By this point, the light had faded almost entirely, casting the wetlands in muted grays and blues and decreasing our visibility. Dan whistled a tune I recognized distantly as “St. James Infirmary” as we switched on our flashlights and trudged through the sulfurous mud, heading back to the main road where our trucks were parked.

The two of us had only been walking down the trail for a few minutes, Dan taking the lead, when he suddenly stumbled forward, cursing and dropping his flashlight as he landed on his stomach. I ran up right away to offer him a hand. He brushed me off, standing up on his own.

“You good?” I asked, and Dan just nodded, looking around for what had caused him to lose his balance.

What appeared to be a thick white cord had been stretched across the path like a tripwire. It looked sturdy, like climbing rope. As I cast my flashlight beam over it, the surface of the rope almost seemed to glow, wet and sparkling in the dirt. Dan shook his boot, trying to untangle himself from the length of cord which had ensnared him. I wondered vaguely what kind of game hunters would be trying to trap during this season, and with such an elaborate system. The only species that came to mind were deer, wild boars, or the occasional bobcat. I pitched the question to Dan to pass the time.

“Hell if I know,” he said as he brushed dead leaves from his vest. “Irresponsible is what they are, setting a tripwire across a footpath like that.” I agreed, and we fell into steady silence once more, pushing onwards through the dense tunnel of undergrowth.

It was pitch black now. We walked beneath the moonless sky, wandering between the massive trunks of cypress trees and live oaks. The path looked so different at night. Surely it hadn’t been this long of a trek to the work site. How had we managed to transport all of the equipment so quickly? This entire operation had been a blur. For a month or so before, money had been tight and fresh jobs had been few and far in between. Naturally, when the phone call came in asking us to tear down a few old trees, I’d jumped at the offer.

Were we lost?

Dan, still ahead of me, had lit a cigarette, taking long drags as he walked. I could see the glowing end of it bobbing up ahead like a tiny red torch. The secondhand smoke wafted back to me.

I cleared my throat. “Dan,” I said, “y’think we might’ve taken a wrong turn?”

He froze in place, his back still turned to me. The cigarette dropped, fizzling out on the damp leaf litter below.

I nearly bumped into him. “Dan?”

My coworker remained silent, staring into the darkness at the path before us. Up ahead, something screamed. I jumped.

The noise was inhuman, a garbled, wet braying like whatever was emitting the sound had something sharp lodged in its throat.

Dan angled his flashlight towards whatever was lurking just beyond the beam. He nudged my shoulder, urging me to look as well. Against my better judgement, I did.

Allowing my gaze to follow the trajectory of the beam, my eyes fell upon the body of an animal.

A white-tailed deer.

The poor thing’s body hung suspended at least five or six feet in the air, its long legs scrambling for purchase on the ground which lay just out of reach. Somehow, it hadn’t yet suffocated. I grabbed my pocket knife and went to free the suffering animal.

Dan grabbed my arm. “Are you insane, Jerry?” I looked him in the eye. His jaw was set, a thick sweat beading on his furrowed brow. There was no mistaking it. For perhaps the first time in our long-running career together, Dan looked afraid.

The deer bellowed again, writhing and spinning in space.

“Whoever set this trap is the crazy one,” I whispered back, ripping my arm free from his grasp. “Darn thing is suffering.” Despite the way my neck prickled with unease, I ran right up to the twitching animal, trying to avoid stumbling on roots and snake holes. It bucked again as I approached, but I stretched a hand up above its neck, grabbing the top of the rope to hold it steady.

I could feel the doe’s hot breath blowing against my face in puffs as I began to hack away at the rope with my knife. Wide, blank eyes fixed upon me pleadingly as I worked.

After a minute or so of sawing at the cording, I’d barely made a dent. Again and again, I tried to score the rope, but it held tight. As I opened my mouth to report this to Dan, I heard him give a sort of alarmed yelp.

I peered past the struggling animal I was desperately trying to save, angling my flashlight in Dan’s direction just in time to see him slip onto his side as if pulled by unseen hands. I heard the crunch of his body as it hit a clump of roots. He lay there unceremoniously for a moment, groaning in pain. Then, like a ragdoll, my coworker was dragged upwards by the legs. All at once, his body was torn from the ground and scooped into the darkened trees. There was no impact sound as he left the beam of my light. Just an empty, terrible silence. I stood there watching, unmoving. Speechless.

The doe, becoming agitated again, began to twist once more, letting that horrible, stuttering scream echo through the pitch black swamp.

Snapping back to my senses, I lunged towards the place where Dan had disappeared, only for an excruciating, stinging sensation to jolt through my palm where I had gripped the rope to steady my blade. Each time I pulled, the stinging roared to a searing pain. My hand was stuck to the rope.

“What the hell?” I muttered under my breath, panic flaring. The doe continued its wretched bleating as I tried again to wrench my hand loose from that strange silken rope.

On the third try, my hand came free. My palm did not. I heard and felt the unmistakable ripping of my own flesh as the top layer of skin liberated itself from the pads of my fingers.

Bleeding but too adrenaline-filled to bother, I booked it to the spot where I had seen Dan being swept into the trees.

Steeling myself, I gripped the flashlight in my good hand and angled it up into the canopy.

The bright white of the beam illuminated Dan’s pale, sweat-drenched face inches from mine.

I shouted aloud, nearly dropping the light.

His eyes were closed. He was still hanging, serenely swinging in place just as the deer had been. The shock of his ascent seemed to have knocked him unconscious. Examining his limp body, I caught sight of that same luminous, glittering rope ensnaring his left leg in thick coils. Whatever happened, I wasn’t touching that stuff again. Instead, I grabbed both of Dan’s arms and pulled.

The rope had some give, or else whatever it was attached to bowed slightly as I tried in vain to yank my friend free.

“Come on, son-of-a…” I pulled with my entire body weight, only letting up when I heard something in Dan’s shoulder pop. Sore, bruised and bloody, I paused in my work to stare up at the endless canopy. I felt something like guilt. For Dan’s shoulder, probably. Or else, for bringing us into these cursed woods to begin with. I didn’t know. I just wanted to go home.

Something dripped from Dan’s peaceful face onto mine. Sweat, I thought at first. It was strangely sweet, cloyingly so. Like the scent of some strange fruit or flower. Dan’s arms were sticky, too. As I went to adjust my grip, my hands began to sting again. No. Not him too.

But sure enough, my hands were stuck to the surface of his skin as if glued in place with extra-strength epoxy. An acidic, prickling pain shot through my fingers, and yet I could not tear away without risking more pain for the both of us.

I couldn’t leave him here. I couldn’t leave this swamp on my own. But we couldn’t both stay here.

As I considered my options, a low creaking began, like the sound of branches bending in the wind. I froze, listening.

Next came a rhythmic click, click, click. It was almost metallic in nature. Absolutely foreign.

It was coming from above us.

There, up past Dan’s body, mostly buried in the darkness of the branches, I spotted movement. I forced my eyes to focus, using what little light was cast from my discarded flashlight to pick out the figure above us. It was huge, whatever it was, causing branches to bend and creak in its wake. The surface of the swollen shape was smooth and ever so slightly shiny. End to end, the abdomen easily eclipsed the size of my work truck. I was transfixed, mouth open, my heart hammering so hard I thought it would give out.

It began to crawl.

The thing in the trees advanced in a perfect vertical line downwards, headfirst. I couldn’t look away.

It grew closer, closer, until the light caught on more of its features.

A crooked nose. A slack, open mouth. A pale bare chest that glowed silver in the artificial light. I couldn’t see the rest of it from this angle, but as each detail solidified before me, all I could think was that this form was absolutely wrong. My humanity rejected it instinctively. I now believe that the devil and his kin do walk this earth in the flesh. There is no other explanation, plain and simple.

It smiled. Or, tried to. I was reminded of rotting jack-o-lanterns withering on the porch.

Then Dan and I were both ripped into the canopy, leaves and vines scraping our faces as we were lifted up towards that horrible grinning visage floating in the dark.

On the way up, I think my head collided with a branch. My vision went white.

The night gets a little fuzzy from that moment on. Forgive me.

My head throbbed. My ears rang. With both our flashlights long discarded, my eyes began to clear, adjusting to the darkness.

What I saw before me makes me wish I had lost my vision entirely.

The trees were all draped in so much cobweb that it looked like yards of lace tablecloth stretched and folded over themselves. The stuff blanked every surface in a false floor of silk. A thousand tiny threads tickled my skin. I wondered vaguely what sort of many-legged creatures had found their way into my hair and clothes. Strange bulbous lumps of debris were heaped around me, some swaying gently from higher branches. I counted almost a dozen.

At the center of the mess was… it.

It could have been a human woman. Almost. The torso and head were right, if you squinted. Graceful and harsh in profile with long, straight black hair. The face was beautiful, but dead and empty, cracked across its nose and mouth like a porcelain mask. I was reminded of insects with their false eyes, mimicking the world around them to increase their odds of winning the evolutionary lottery.

Deception was a means of survival.

Around the midsection, the pale torso gave way to something smooth and shiny like shellac that ballooned outward into a pulsing dome. It was the twitching abdomen of what could only be a spider. From that same center point of connection, long barbed legs sprouted outwards, clinging to the webbing effortlessly.

I beheld her, the owner of the false eyes. I could barely breathe.

Her human torso was doubled over at the waist, her legs gripping a man’s body. I called out for Dan, but as the limp head lolled into view, I realized that it wasn’t him.

It was Cam.

They were all wrapped up together. The creature leaned forward and pressed its mouth to his, coaxing his lips open.

The act looked like a kiss. I couldn’t understand it.

Wish I never did.

The noise. God, the noise. A gulping. Slow, and grotesque. Like a carton of thick soup being emptied out into a pot. And a crackling that could only be meat tearing from bone.

No. Not a kiss.

A seal.

I watched as the body of Cam deflated. I could see the hollowed out bag of his flesh sinking inward, devoid of fluid. A sort of sick reverse CPR.

My stomach heaved and fought against me, threatening to turn itself inside out. I couldn’t help but remember the last conversation I’d had with the kid. Chewing him out for an honest mistake. I thought that we’d work plenty of jobs together. He would have time to learn, to grow. And now we were going to die side by side in this hellhole.

I still haven’t forgiven myself, all these years later. Don’t think I ever will.

Once it had finished its meal, the creature encased the dehydrated corpse in thick coating of fresh webbing from its spinneret before discarding the parcel thoughtlessly with a back leg. It just left Cam’s body there, a pale and empty husk that barely resembled anything human. I watched it fall to rest beside a lump of debris that could only be another corpse, mummified in its gauzy prison. The second corpse also wore a familiar reflective jacket.

I didn’t want it to be true. It couldn’t be. I looked up, scanning the web for what I knew I would find. A dozen bodies. A dozen men.

My team.

I keep retracing the steps of my life, everything that led me to that night. At the time, I didn’t feel as though I’d had many other options. I told my first wife once that I burned every relationship I touched. She said nothing. Didn’t disagree. Divorced twice, thoroughly convinced I was never deserving of a happy ending, I did what I could to make ends meet. Took up a clearcutting gig, spent more time understanding heavy machinery than people, and that was that.

In this final moment, several thoughts occupied my mind: If this is the end, management will replace me tomorrow. If I make it through, at least I’ll get a cold beer. But who will I be when this is all over?

The woman-spider was approaching, headfirst, her placid face gentle and welcoming but hungry around its jagged edges. I struggled against the web. An icy-hot pain shot through my muscles as I did, numbing and immobilizing every limb.

Did I ever live as I wanted?

She got closer.

I was paralyzed, my breathing shallow. My throat began to constrict.

The cold and smiling disc of her face was nearly pressed to mine.

I took a deep gulp of the rancid air and choked out,

“What have I done to you?”

The woman-spider stopped. It stared with empty eyes. Its mouth hung open unnaturally on its jaw hinge, a black void yawning open inside. It gave a shuttering wheeze, its vocal chords shredding together like a broken fiddle.

I felt so stupid for even trying to communicate with something so alien. Still, I persisted.

“Where did you come from?”

It did speak. Not with its voice, but through the web. The vibrations filled my skull, rattling my senses until it distilled into the notion of language.

Far away.

“You’re invasive?”

How can I be called invader?

It was men like you who took me away from home.

I thought this place could be home, but you are taking it too.

My head was throbbing. Every ounce of my being was inundated emotion that was not my own.

I miss my trees.

I miss my children.

Where are they?

An overwhelming sorrow filled my ribcage. I nearly wept. I did not know why. What did I have to be sorry for, especially to this monster?

The beautiful rotten clay face began to split open along a seam to reveal sharp mouthparts dripping with strings of drool.

“I mean you no harm,” I tried, desperate to prolong the conversation, if it could be called that.

You lie.

I could smell the curdled blood of my former colleagues on her lips. The scent hit the back of my throat in waves, making me gag. Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. The air was humid and rank. My vision swam.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “I am so, so sorry. It shouldn’t have to be this way.”

I realized I meant it.

Eight glossy black eyes readjusted. I could feel the ancient weight of their gaze upon me.

Suddenly, I smelled smoke and burning flesh.

The creature shrieked and hissed, jerking away from me. Her abdomen was on fire.

The entire web was going up in flames. I looked desperately for the source of the blaze and found it.

Dan lay a few paces away from me, his limbs bound in web. He looked badly beaten and delirious, but when I noticed him, he gave a smile. In one barely-exposed hand, he gripped his trusty cigarette lighter.

The thick ropes of web carried the flame up and across like tinder. The woman-spider thrashed and howled, a sound which pierced my heart in a way I do not understand. As that glistening arachnoid body crackled and swelled in the heat, her jaws flashed open once more.

“Get the hell out of here!” Dan shouted over the roar of the flames. As he did, those massive mandibles snapped shut for the final time. Dan fell silent.

The last thing I saw as the flames licked away my bindings were eight massive black legs curling inward around a charred, empty body.

Finally free, I hurled myself away from the spreading heat, crashing into the trees below. I managed to grab hold of a supple branch on the way down, somewhat breaking my fall, but landed hard on my ankle. I heard something pop.

Too charged with adrenaline to care, I bolted into the darkness, my uniform still smoldering, slipping on wet leaves as shocks of pain coursed through my leg. I sprinted until my lungs ached for air, tasting nothing but smoke and blood in the back of my raw throat.

At some point in that sleepless night I must have found the main path again, because I remember making it back to my truck as dawn was breaking through the trees. Dan’s truck was parked at an angle few yards away, empty and sprinkled with fallen oak leaves.

I sat there, staring at that empty truck for a good long minute. Before I drove from those godforsaken woods for the last time, I opened the cooler in my backseat. I cracked open a cold beer and set it in the bed of Dan’s truck.

“You weren’t right about most things,” I said. “But neither was I. Take it easy.”

It seemed like the thing to do. I drove home.