Nightmares from the Graveyard by John Clewarth
Spiders! He hated them. No, more serious still, he was terrified of them; and it was Oliver himself who was used to doing the terrifying, mainly of other kids, so this didn’t sit well with him. He wished that Lucy Wigmore was here so that he could pull her long blonde pigtails and make her cry, just like he did every playtime; that always made him feel much, much better. Oh, but he’d pull them all the more hard when they got back to school in September!
Dad had lifted the kettle to fill it for ‘a cuppa’ and one of the eight-legged freaks had galloped out from underneath, before disappearing down the crack in the cutlery drawer, never to be seen again..? Dad was a squisher, always had been, but Mum dutifully gathered up as many of the little beasts as she could catch and deposited them in the field outside (the sheep didn’t seem to mind). She forbade Terminator Dad from getting anywhere near!
Oliver stayed as far away from the action as he could, but always insisted on seeing them thrown out, just so he knew for sure they’d gone.
They were worst at bedtime. This was when they seemed to appear out of thin air. Mum was actually getting quite cross with Oliver by about eleven o’clock, after having removed the umpteenth spider from his bedroom (particularly as she’d tucked him up at nine-thirty).
She and Dad were trying to have some ‘quality time’ she’d said. And she put off his light, issuing an exasperated ultimatum: “Now, not another peep, Oliver. There aren’t any more spiders anywhere in the caravan. I’ve already caught just about every single one in the northern hemisphere!”
And that was supposed to reassure him?!
For what seemed like centuries, he lay with his eyes open, scanning the darkness for scuttling horrors. But the blackness was impenetrable. Each time he heard a faint sound (perhaps a rustle of his duvet? Or the leaves in the bushes outside his window?), he would sit bolt upright, straining his ears for the patter of multiple tiny feet… Every time he felt the slightest itch, he would slap himself wildly, flapping like a demented chicken – and he would listen!
But the night would reveal nothing.
Somehow, he slipped into an exhausted slumber…
His dreams were filled with squirming, dashing hopping, many-legged horrors; some tiny, some unfeasibly large. His dreamscape was dimly lit, allowing just enough light for Oliver to get a hint of the full dread of these things! But, as they danced wickedly around him (some hissed at him) Oliver felt that he would have preferred to have seen them clearly. It was the not seeing, the half-seeing that freaked him most – because it left his imagination to fill in the rest…
As the bad dream reached boiling point, the seething monsters closed in, and began crawling over his skin. Within seconds, his entire body was covered in a clattering, scratching mass of monstrous beasts. Suddenly, his nightmare lit up in white-light. Just for a nano-second.
And he saw them, in all their sickening glory…
A deafening explosion shattered the dream and made Oliver shriek out loud in fright.
“Oliver! What on earth’s the matter?” Dad’s voice sounded sleepy and grumpy.
“A – a – big bang!” stammered Oliver.
“It’s just thunder,” patronised Dad. “Now get yourself back to sleep!”
A second flash of lightning flared, and bathed his tiny bedroom in a ghostly glow, for a fraction of a second. He exhaled a shuddering breath and tugged off his pyjama top, which was bathed in sweat. The belly of the sky rumbled thunder again, and Oliver clicked on his bedside lamp.
“Just a bad dream,” he whispered, “Just a bit of thunder.” He slowly calmed himself, had a sip of water, and reached out to switch off his lamp, his hand brushing the lampshade as he did so.
That’s when the plump, hairy spider ran out from beneath the shade – straight onto his hand. In an instinctive reaction, he brought his free hand crashing down onto the spider, and it splattered like a juicy grape.
“Urghh!” he yelled, as he stared in disbelief at the reddish-blackish-hairy remains of the spider, stuck to the back of his hand; the legs were still twitching, even though some of them had become detached from the body…
“What now?!” boomed Dad.
“Nothing! Sorry!” Oliver did not want Mum getting wind of this; she’d accuse him of murder or something. He grabbed a handful of tissues and, nose seriously wrinkling, cleaned up his hand of spider guts and body bits.
Shaking with shock, he crept out to the loo and flushed the gungy tissues down the pot. He washed his hands and, pulling the little cord on the bathroom mirror, he looked dazedly at his reflection. Dark-rimmed, red-streaked eyes peered back at him. And for some reason, he felt totally and utterly exposed.
Vulnerable.
A shadow loomed over his shoulder and, in the mirror he saw the form of a gigantic spider. Its multiple eyes glowed wickedly-evil and its grotesque body was covered in long, sharp hairs. Most hideous of all, were the hissing jaws, which housed two deadly-looking fangs that dripped venom, and the two blonde pigtails that dangled oh-so-wrongly down the side of its bulbous head…
Spinning around, determined to make some kind of effort to fight this thing off, Oliver was stunned more than ever to see his Mum smiling kindly down at him, her hair reassuringly dark, in its stylish bob-cut. His lips formed the word ‘Mum’, but no sound came out.
“Darling, it’s okay,” Mum soothed, “Come here, sweetheart.” Oliver was flooded with blessed relief, as Mum took him in her arms and hugged him close. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to be enveloped. She embraced him so closely and tightly that she seemed to have more than one pair of arms. He barely noticed the twin pinpricks in his soft, bare neck, as he began to lose all feeling in his limbs, and consciousness spiralled gently away…
# # # # #
Total relaxation and tranquillity were the feelings he experienced upon first waking.
He considered stretching his arms lazily, but he really couldn’t be bothered; they felt rather heavy anyway. Perhaps he’d move in a short while. It was so lovely and cosy here in bed. He didn’t even care to open his eyes. Not yet.
Just a few more minutes…
He was sure Mum and Dad wouldn’t mind if he lay in bed a bit longer. His thoughts briefly returned to Mum cuddling him in the bathroom. So safe, so sound. He must have fallen asleep right there and then in her arms.
He couldn’t really remember.
Strange that, in a way. Why couldn’t he remember?
For some reason, his heart started to beat a little faster.
Then he heard Dad; he was moaning – a long, desperate moan, like a soul in torment.
Oliver’s eyes snapped open. And what he saw made him cry out in abject terror.
He was in Mum and Dad’s room. In their bed. Beside him, lay Dad. And from the crazed look in his eyes, he’d gone quite mad.
Driven insane by fear.
The caravan bedroom was covered in masses of spider webs, so thick that only dim grey light could pass through the small window. The hideous gossamer clung to the walls, the door, the mirror; it dangled ghost-like from the light fitting; it covered the floor like a ghastly blanket.
And Dad and Oliver were cocooned in the stuff. Wrapped up tight, like two weird Egyptian mummies. So tight that they were completely immobilized, except for being able to move their heads slightly.
“Mum! MUM!!” screamed Oliver at the top of his lungs.
“No – Oliver – no!” babbled Dad. Oliver couldn’t comprehend why Dad didn’t want Mum to come and help. It must have been his cracked state of mind, Oliver thought.
“Yes, dear,” Mum’s voice calmingly replied, “I’ll be right there, darling. Almost lunchtime now.”
Oliver felt relief… which was soon replaced by apprehension.
Lunchtime? Why was Mum talking about lunch, when he and Dad were imprisoned in this horrendous web?
From the far end of the room, he heard a scraping, rustling sound. It was c
“Mum..?”
The wardrobe door swung slowly open, and from a tangled mess of sticky web came emerged a bloated, bristle-haired spider; it stood as tall as the room itself. Its legs moved, oh-so-slowly, as it came out from its lair. It hissed, and dripped venom from needle fangs.
But the thing that made Oliver’s blood freeze in his veins, was the face that the spider wore. It had his mother’s face – and Lucy Wigmore’s pigtails. It grinned at him.
“Mummy’s here… And don’t you like my lovely hair? Little Lucy sends her love, and says you can pull my pigtails to your sweet little heart’s content,” it rattled at him. “You really shouldn’t be unkind to harmless spiders, you know. It’s the big ones you should really worry about, poppet.”
The monster’s grotesque smile faded and it turned towards Dad. In an instant, it had scuttled across the room, onto the bed, and poised itself – fangs bared – over Dad.
Its spider-mother’s eyes swivelled to Oliver again, and it spoke in that devilish, grating voice: “Main course first. Then you, for dessert. After all, I have babies to feed.”
At this, an army of spiders scrambled from the wardrobe and swarmed up over the bed, carpeting the paralysed father and son in a shadowy, heaving mass.
As the Mum-creature lunged at Dad, Oliver opened his mouth to scream again, and the first of a wave of seething, hairy black bodies skittered in…
The temperature at the heart of the sepulchral circle had dropped so dramatically that Danny’s flesh was turning blue. The uncontrolled shivering of his limbs was the only movement he made; Danny’s mind was conscious yet trapped within a body that may as well have been a corpse.
The ethereal figure of Mr Fraxinus began to reform now, before Danny’s staring, paralysed eyes. It began as a hint of a man, a mere darkening of the shadows. The howling wind accompanied the solidification of the shadow man. The long grey coat still shrouded Mr Fraxinus’ form and the face remained set in darkness. Danny noted with a mixture of horror and confusion, however, that something else protruded from the sleeves and collar of the shabby coat; there appeared to be tendrils – leafy tendrils – growing from the very form of Mr Fraxinus. Danny’s stomach lurched and his blood froze, as he saw those same twig-like shoots now writhing free from the dark pits that were the stranger’s eyes.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. He desperately needed to be free.
He remained silent and immobile, as the man-growths slithered toward him, past him; weird wooden weeds that hissed and whispered, as they encircled and became one with the trunk of the old Ash.
Within a heartbeat, the huge grey coat collapsed to the floor, empty of life and flapping in the guttering wind. Danny screwed up his eyes as he heard the body of the Ash tree crack open in the dead night. And his scream finally came, as gnarled, woody hands and arms wrapped themselves around his helpless body.
# # # # #
Jake’s dad told him that the sound must have been a dog-fox barking at the moon. Danny couldn’t have made the sound; when Jake’s father had clambered atop the mausoleum wall and peered into the abysmal central circle, there was no sign of any human life. The only sign of life, was the aged Ash tree, with its flailing, skeletal limbs; limbs that faintly resembled the waving arms of a boy lost to the night …
THE END
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About the author:
John Clewarth lives in historic West Yorkshire, England, an area that is positively bursting with legends and true ghost stories! He is happily married, with two teenage sons, and when he isn’t writing spooky stories, he works as a teacher, enjoying the company of lots of scary but fun children. He has already published two novels for children and young adults – Firestorm Rising and Demons in the Dark – the first of which was a finalist in The People’s Book Prize 2013. You can download both of these from Amazon.
He’s currently writing the sequel to Firestorm Rising and hopes it will scare your socks off.