“But… you don’t need to sleep, so the devil can’t get into your mind, right?”
Azlu’s eyes shut and head swayed from left to right, as if she were suddenly recalling a lullaby in her mind. Alexa and I exchanged glances, then looked up at the spiderling once more, waiting for her to finish whatever trance she had gotten lost in. Finally, she opened her eyes and stared directly at me.
“I can feel it now,” she said, “Sniffing around at the edge of my psychic senses. It is trying to find a way in, but I won’t let it. Not unless I sleep. Can you not feel it also?”
“Me?” I asked.
“We are linked, you and I. We have a bond. Shut your eyes and concentrate, try to listen for it.”
I gave Alexa another glance. She nodded. “I got you, if anything happens,” she said.
Taking a deep breath of air into my lungs, I shut my eyes and allowed my mind a moment of quiet. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was supposed to be doing—I had only ever shared a psychic link with another a handful of times in my life, and usually it was an active connection, one I knew with all certainty was there.
This… this was different. Subtle. At first, it was almost impossible to detect, but then I felt it. It wasn’t a light, or a feeling of hot or cold, it was more like a tremor—a vibration, like the tensing of a rope; or a spider’s web. If I moved my imaginary fingertips, I could feel it in front of me, this long, stiff, ethereal coil.
I touched it, and it made a thwang sound that bounced off imaginary walls, as if I were in a cave. Then I felt her. Azlu. The long strand of web led straight to her, and the more I concentrated on the web, and on her, the more I thought I could smell her… or, at least the weird slime she secreted from her hands.
Hello, I heard her voice in the dark, the coil in my hand vibrating as it carried the sound.
“Back at you,” I replied, my voice also moving along the coil, its echo slowly fading away to nothing.
The more I concentrated, the more I seemed to drift out of the real world and further into this strange inner world I was in. I had, a moment ago, been able to feel the concrete wall at my back, but as I focused on the softly vibrating string in my hand, the concrete wall fell away more and more, until I found myself standing in a dark, empty echo chamber.
“What is this?” I asked.
We call it the web, Azlu said. It is how my kind can communicate across vast distances, and with mother. Welcome.
“Thank you. I feel like a stranger here.”
You are. There aren’t many non-Arachnon who have been invited into this place. Not everyone survives the link.
“Wait… so, you could’ve killed me?”
Mother knew it would not. You have a strong will.
I thought I heard something moving nearby, so I paused, my hand tightly gripping the vibrating coil. “What was that?”
Concentrate.
Shutting my mouth after taking a breath, I waited, and listened. It was dark, and even though I could usually see perfectly fine in the dark, this was different. I could see my hand and the strand of webbing I was holding onto. I could see how it stretched away from me, the lightly translucent coil falling away into darkness.
But I couldn’t see past the darkness. It was as if there was nothing there, only that wasn’t true. There was something there. I could hear it, sniffing, pawing at the ground. The beast. The devil. The sound made my skin crawl and my heart start to race.
It was there, just like Azlu had said. One moment it sounded like it was somewhere to the left, the other it was somewhere to the right. Then it was behind me, in front of me in the darkness, above me somehow. It was disorienting, the speed at which this thing was moving around.
It knew I was here, in this inner space. I could tell in the way it seemed determined to sniff me out. When the creature growled, I jerked away from the coil, a moment of mad panic making me drop it and shrug out of the inner space. I returned to my senses, gasping, scrambling to feel the cold concrete at my back.
Alexa was there right away, taking hold of my shoulders and trying to calm me down with her voice. It was a process. I could hear her speaking, but it sounded like she was speaking to me through a body of water. Eventually, when my senses returned, I found a moment of calm and settled around it, taking hold of myself.
“You okay?” Alexa asked.
“That was one hell of a trip,” I said, shaking my head.
“I’d say. You’ve been out for… fuck, I have no way of telling the time, but probably twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes? It’s only been a few seconds.” I blinked hard and fast, adjusting to the bright light in the cell.
“You touched the shallows of the inner space,” Azlu said, “It is a kind of meditative state in which you are partially conscious, and partially unconscious. I doubt if you could go any deeper since you are not Arachnon, but it was impressive that you reached the shallows all the same.”
“Sounds intense,” Alexa said.
“Intense doesn’t even begin to describe what that felt like,” I said.
“Did you see it?” she asked. “The devil?”
“I didn’t see it, but I heard it. I felt it… like it was all around me.” I shook my head. “We cannot fall asleep.”
“You will not,” Azlu said, extending a hand. It was covered in translucent goop that smelled a little like tree sap, and a little like sweat. “Eat some. It will replenish your bodies and minds. You will be able to forego sleep… for a time, at least.”
“Seriously?” Alexa asked.
“Yeah…” I said, “I was dreading having to get to this part.”
“I ain’t tasting that.”
“It’s going to suck, but you’re going to eat some because I’m not risking you falling asleep tonight.”
Alexa stared at Azlu’s hand and rolled her eyes. “I hate you both,” she said, “But it can’t be worse than some of the shots I’ve dunked in the past.”
Nodding, I smeared some of the goop on my hand and sniffed it. “It’s probably worse,” I said, pinching my nose with my other hand. “Bottoms up. Welcome to the no sleep club.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The no-sleep club was a far cry away from a slumber party; it was a literal, waking nightmare.
It wasn’t that the lights in the cell block were up, making it impossible to tell whether it was still night or if morning had finally rolled along. Nor was it the fact that Alexa, Azlu and I were stuck in a cell with little to do but stare at each other in silence, without anything to help pass the time but the occasional bit of small talk.
What truly elevated this night from simply boring, to nightmarish, was the constant, gut-wrenching noise in the cellblock.
Howls and moans prowled the emptiness, like lonely, desperate ghosts. I could never tell where the sounds were coming from, who was making them, or what they meant. Pain. Fear. Sadness. Likely a little of all three—or a lot, in some cases.
Had the three of us not been together tonight, we each stood a chance of going insane listening to the endless cacophony. We tried to pass the time by talking, but every so often, a shriek would tear through the cellblock and force us all to shut up and listen.