“I ain’t never heard of this before, and we have loads of spiders back home, don’t we, Renee?”

“Yeah, all types. But, I haven’t ever heard of any that makes black webs, never even read about it in school…and I read a lot, once we got the picture books.”

“Explains why these stones are black and not like the rest of the place,” Tammy said softly, looking to her right at the wall by the painting. “But if that were the case, why wouldn’t it be all over the things in the room?”

Fala took the few steps needed to put him in front of us, reached over and lifted the bottom of the painting, causing hundreds more to come running out. He dropped it and we three females screamed, moving to the center of the room with lightning speed. The ceiling above our heads was coming to life with a ripple that ran through the spiders that had made their way up there. “I want to leave this room now,” Tanda whispered, not able to take her eyes off the pulsating visual towering over our heads.

“Grab the torch and burn them,” Tammy said with wide eyes.

“No!” Fala quickly added. “You may cause the others to drop when you start bringing the flame close to the ceiling.

“Never mind,” she swallowed, as a fine tremble became apparent in her hands.

Derek took the torch off the holder as gently as he dared and thrust it through the opening of the wooden wall. He looked back at us and the dread showed in his eyes. “It’s a small passageway, and I can only see so far with the glow of the light.” He stepped in, holding the torch out in front of him, and we got closer to the opening with Fala stepping in behind us. The sizzling sound was loud as he burned the black web that was so thick it was impenetrable without taking it down. The web popped every so often, and the smell of something other than webs burning was noticeable as we passed, making our way into the narrow, damp passage, having no idea where it was taking us.

“I really don’t like the feeling of this, Derek,” I admitted, having a bad gut feeling that the tight slanted passage was leading us further down into something far worse.

“It’s gonna be alright. We’ll find our way out,” he replied, never taking his eyes off the area in front of him.

“Before dawn I hope. I really don’t wanna be stuck down here after the sun comes up,” Tammy said, making me wish she hadn’t brought that thought to mind.

“We won’t be down here that long, will we?” Tanda stopped, turning to look at me.

“I don’t know sweetie. I just don’t know.”

Derek stopped a few feet up ahead and told us the passage went two ways, and wanted to know which way he should go. Fala told him to look at the flames on the torch and see if they were pulling one way more than the other, explaining they would go to the flow of air. Derek turned to the right, calling back to watch our steps, that the floor was starting to get slick. The one good thing about the way he turned was, the deeper we went the fewer webs hung over our heads. About fifty feet down the stone floor turned into slick steps that opened up into another room, only this one was twice the size of the first. Tammy, Tanda, and myself stayed by the opening of the steps while Fala and Derek followed the wall looking for more torches or some form of wall sconces, finding two on the right side of the room and lighting it enough to look for more without having to hunker down.

“Are those what I think they are?” Tammy asked, pointing to the other side.

“They look like cribs,” I replied, staring in disbelief, thinking they had to be something else.

The room had streaks of the black web here and there, but nothing like the so- called study that we left crawling with an abundance of creepy crawlers. The walls were the natural color of sand, but the floor was stained with a mixture of the black coating and bones in piles that looked spread out on purpose close to the walls. After Derek and Fala lit the only other two torches on the opposite side of the room, we three began making our way to the center. I was intrigued to find out if what we thought were cribs, truly were. There were four in all, and they were indeed baby cribs. They were smeared in the black gore, but with no webs. It was then that Tammy and I saw a small room behind the two cribs in the middle, hidden from view due to the shadows.

“Bring me your torch, Derek,” Tammy snapped her fingers, not taking her eyes off the four little cribs.

My mind was spinning as much as hers, wondering why on earth there would be baby cribs in a place like this, other than it being a sick breeder like Cortez, but he gave the infant’s corpses as a show of some warped sense of gift to those he visited while in route for slave trading. Tammy gasped as soon as the light filled the small room and I froze as the knowledge sunk in. There was a birthing table in the center and larger piles of bones on both sides of the bed. The women must have given birth then were killed and dropped to the side like worthless trash. But, why? And why keep the babies down here? My mind was in so much turmoil, that nothing that I came up with made any sense.

“These are the bones of the little ones,” Fala said, standing up from one of the strange piles spread throughout the room.

“I think maybe that guy in the painting was one sick bastard to have women down here, just to kill their babies,” Derek said, walking around in the room with the odd shaped table. “Wonder why it doesn’t smell more like death down here?”

“This is long death. It doesn’t look like it has been used in a great many years,” Fala replied, turning to look at us.

“What do you think those big holes up there are? Drainage?” Tanda asked, raising her finger in the direction. “I think I just saw something.”

“Like what?” I asked, walking over to her. “Where?”

Fala turned to look up as Tanda and I screamed out with every ounce of air in our bodies. Fala stumbled back but was nowhere near fast enough to get away from the dropping spider that came out of the hole that Tanda had seen moments before. Derek came flying out of the small room, reaching for the blade that he no longer had, because I had it. The huge black and gray spider had its legs locked around Fala’s upper body. Its tail lifted and a shot rang out so loud that I went deaf, as the large body of the spider exploded, covering Fala in a greenish liquid of its body fluids. Fala was completely pale as Derek kicked the massive spider off of him.

“Did it bite you?” Derek asked, looking for the evidence, as Fala stood shaking his head over and over.

“Grab your weapons!” Derek yelled. “Better change before these other holes come to life,” he said, putting his back to Fala’s and looking up at the other places that more could come from.

Fala swallowed twice, then began taking off his pants. He tossed them to the side, and was about to remove his shirt when a second spider came down behind us. Tammy spun around as it legs reached for her, and sliced her blade through the air cutting off part of its front two legs, screaming the whole time. The same green liquid sprayed out, but the spider scurried back up as fast as it could, disappearing from sight.

“Wonder what’s kept them alive?” Derek asked, as a huge growl reverberated throughout the room. Fala had shifted.

“Why don’t they just attack at the same time,” Tanda asked, getting ‘shhh’s’ from Tammy and myself as soon as the words left her mouth.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Derek said, frantically moving his eyes around the room. “Fala, start looking for another way out, or we go back up the way we came.”

I counted eight holes in all, and one dead spider. We had no way of knowing how many had survived down here and how many would come out of which opening. Fala broke one of the sconces off the wall and held it up in front of the hole that the dead spider came out of and nothing happened. His werewolf form seemed to have little fear of the arachnids now, and he moved swiftly to the next hole. I don’t think any of us knew what he was doing until the flame of the sconce blew back into the room then flickered, and just as swiftly the blaze turned back toward the opening of the spiders dewelling.