I swear to have seen a spider, large as a dinner plate, with an ape-like face and twitching human fingers for legs, ground down to bloody points. But only a flash witnessed in a broken pane of glass. The bike thing was some illusion. A twisting of light and color, nothing more.
It was then , in the darkening hours of the day, that six young travelers entered, seating themselves at the single large feast table. Colorful, happy, bawdy souls in all, they seemed unaffected by the haze of terror that lingered among the workmen.
3🧵
I found no sign of mold or damp, gas or chemical, any phenomenon to explain the various sightings.
The matron, dutiful and mild in manner, brought the travelers beer, soft pretzels, and honey butter - leaving them to chitter and indulge.
4 🧵
The workmen, in the growing dark, left as quickly as a flock of larks, in one writing mass at the foreman's whistle. Unashamed in their obvious terror. Each man nodded to me, the stranger, in quiet gratitude and sorrowful fancy, as I dared to remain after dark.
5 🧵
The matron's cat darted from beneath the travelers' table, causing a vigorous uproar from the few that drowned out the quiet peacefulness of the rest.
One knocked over a pitcher and bowled himself over his chair as the woman to his shrieked from a dousing of cold beer.
6 🧵
"I'll eat that God damned cat!" Said the man who toppled.
The rest chided and piled on quip and comment, an echo chamber of dionysian grandeur.
My blood ran cold at sight of the Matron, stamping out from the kitchen. I dared not move, crouched in the dark rubble.
She spoke, loud and clear as a fell, fervored priest:
"There are those with nine lives
and those without.
Those who know fear
which are the devout.
Fed on beast and man
And humble rat,
Tis devils and Hell Hounds that
confess'd to the cat!"
8 🧵
I fled, once it had passed, from that ruined, godless place and never spoke of it out loud. For I fear what damned sight I saw still watches me, still listens, patient and hungry. But I see such sights with my waking eye, now, and cannot trust to memory.
I saw -
9 🧵
the most loud man, the self proclaimed cat-eater, come apart like a scarecrow tied to four horses. The limbs floated there among his own exsanguination. In the space of a heartbeat he had stopped being man and became suspended human components.
There was no air to scream.
The hands and feet splayed out, ripping and twisting into new, impossible shapes. The blood channeled into a whip-like tendril on the back of the shape, compressed now into the size of a loaf of bread. Spined or quilled with fragments of the man it once was.
10 🧵
The travelers were still and silent as I, unable to coax our mortal minds to any semblance of action, reason. We stared dumbly as the thing fell with a wet thud, and disappeared beneath the table.
The next howl of pain bade my body to flee in blind, mute, inhuman horror.
11/11
::: And then I woke up. I remembered the whole thing, from finding the hotel to running away, clear as day.
I hope you enjoy the early style of writing, as it fits with how I perceived the world of the dream.
In time - I hope to forget.
