Ghouljaw and Other Stories by Clint Smith

segmented, shiny. Seven more slits appeared and seven more legs poked out of the bag, which was rattling to pieces like a dried-out beehive. I could see an oblong smoothness inside, and think now of the bloated tissue of a satiated tick, the grayish flesh covered with dark, hairy bristles. There were other things imbedded in its skin—calcium-colored pieces of teeth and bone, like half-formed elements growing within the soft, timorous tissue. Then I saw an eye—a black, glistening eye, as large and a smooth as an obsidian billiard ball.
    I was unable to move. What I was seeing was impossible. But it was real. And in that awful dissonance between the impossibility and reality, a single sustained howl broke free in my mind—a sound that made me feel both alive and nauseous. Maybe you’ll see and feel something like that someday.
    I summoned enough of my threadbare faculties to shake out of my paralysis, making a staggering twist toward the fireplace, reaching out and grabbing the bronze tongs on the hearth and spinning back around. Despite myself, I made a few confident strides toward the kitchen. The bag was completely detached from the vacuum now, and the spider-tick thing was on its back, its legs making desperate, wriggling swirls in the air. In what may have been panic, the thing started excreting a viscous web on the floor, made of thick strands of dark silk.
    Just as I opened the tongs, the thing righted itself, flopped over, and grappled the floor. In a foul-smelling burst of dust, the tick-thing vomited a pool of spiders and beetles. Small black scuttling things spilled over the floor, darting in different directions. I felt the first sick tickle of something crawling up my shin, and by the time I swatted at it, I felt something working its way up my stomach, my chest, my collarbone. I slapped at something on my chin, feeling a wetness smear greasily near my lower lip.
    Holding my breath, I stepped forward, my boots crunching the black carpet of bugs on the hardwood floor, and made a wincing grab for the spider-tick with the tongs, pinching it around the bloated abdomen and shuffling toward the back door, holding the bag with the tongs and reaching for the doorknob with my free hand. The black-widow quills were wriggling, gyrating in eight directions, slashing at the air. I twisted the knob, took one step onto the porch, and pitched the thing out into the snow. It rolled and tumbled for a moment before balancing, those black legs quickly making a mincing retreat toward the barren field, trailing a cloud of dust behind it.
    I shuffled off the porch and took a few steps into the snowdrift-thick yard.
    Through the visible puffs of my rapid breathing, and through the low-lying cloud of vacuum dust, I caught a glimpse of black bristles on the thing’s back, and of dozens of multi-colored, arachnid-dotted eyes glittering in the weak gray light as those ink-dipped legs carried the thing across the snow.
    I stood there for a moment, trying to catch my breath, watching the knee-high weeds part as the thing scurried into the forest that fringes my property. I heard—as if coming from numerous mocking mouths or mandibles—the distant echo of tinny giggles. “’Night, ’night,” it said, “’night, ’night—’night, ’night . . .”
    Suddenly imagining the sensation of dozens of delicate legs crawling inside my clothes, I began swatting at my body, panic-slapping the back of my neck, my arms, shaking my hair and scratching my scalp.
    Eventually, stillness returned. I was still. Dust from the shredded vacuum bag dissipated in thin wisps toward the sky, mingling with the pencil-scratch trail of smoke and ash drifting from my cobblestone chimney. Somewhere over in the woods, a bird gave up a jerky sounding squawk.
    That was this morning. It’s evening now. When I came back inside I didn’t see any of the bugs on the floor. But I could hear them. In the cabinets, in the walls. Rustling under the carpet.
    I thought