Spiders in My Brain

“Why do you guys always bring me to crazy places like this?” Albert complained as we made our way through the abandoned house. It looked like something out of Victorian London.
“Suck it up, Albert, you big baby,” I retorted. Me, Andrea, and Luke were way ahead of him. “What’s the point of life if you don’t add a little excitement to it?”
“What if we get ourselves killed here?” Albert complained as he ducked under a cobweb. “Wouldn’t that miss the point of living life to the fullest?”
“Oh, you’re hopeless,” Andrea replied nonchalantly. 
Luke chuckled.
“Hey, look!” I said. “This place has a library!”
We all went inside. “I wonder what kind of old books are in here,” I said aloud.
“Maybe rare, valuable first editions,” Andrea suggested.
“That ought to sell for tons of money,” Luke chimed in.
“See, Albert?” I said. “I told you it was worth coming here.”
Albert didn’t seem to agree. “Maisy, this was someone’s home once. How would they feel if they knew we were desecrating it?”
“That’s the point, Albert,” Andrea said, exasperated. “They’re too dead to call the cops on us.”
Meanwhile, Luke was poking through the books.
Albert didn’t seem amused by Andrea’s quip. “You guys, I’m serious,” he insisted. “We need to get out of here before-”
“Whoa!” Luke shouted, jumping back from the bookshelf. A monstrous spider jumped out of a book and ran across the floor. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Andrea froze. Albert put his hands over his head to protect himself.
“See what I mean?” Albert gulped.
“Come on, Al, that was just a spider,” I said. I was losing my patience with his neurosis. Though at the same time, I was starting to get a little creeped out.
“Can we just go home now?” Luke asked. “I’m starting to get a weird feeling too.”
“Hold on!” Andrea replied, tugging on one of the books. “I think I recognize this one! It ought to sell for-”
The book tilted forward like a lever. The whole bookshelf swiveled, revealing a secret passageway behind it. We all stared at the secret passageway, bewildered.
Albert piped up.
“Didn’t we see this in a movie once?”
...
Against our better judgment, we slowly crept down the passageway. Torches embedded in the walls lit our way. “This is bad,” Albert whimpered with fear. “This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. We need to go home before we get ourselves killed. I’m jumping out of my skin here, guys.”
“Dude, chill out,” Andrea said impatiently.
“Come on, Albert,” Luke insisted. “Relax, man. Nothing’s coming to get you.”
“Yeah, Albert,” I piped up. “You need to smoke joints less often if they’re making you this paranoid.”
“Shut up!” Albert retorted. “I have every right to be paranoid. We’ve illegally entered an abandoned house, all just to look around! We could have just read a book or played a game, but no! You just had to lead us into this godforsaken place. So if we all get murdered by ghosts or whatever, don’t come crying to-”
“Holy shit, look!” Andrea piped up, pointing.
There was a corpse up ahead, all wrapped up in spider webbing. In fact, there were tons just like it.
Albert finished his sentence meekly. “...me?”
I ignored him. “Is that a sarcophagus?” I asked, pointing. I walked forward.
“Holy crap,” Luke said. “I’ve heard about this stuff. Back in Victorian times, the English were obsessed with Egyptian treasures. But the pyramids and sarcophagi had all sorts of deadly traps in them.”
“But why are these guys all wrapped up in spider webbing?” Andrea asked, poking one of the corpses. She flinched when its head crumbled to dust.
“I don’t know,” Luke replied. “Maybe they managed to domesticate some kind of deadly spider?”
“You guys…” Albert whimpered. We all turned to him at once.
What we saw made us freeze. The biggest, ugliest spider we’d ever seen in our lives was sitting on his head.
...
“Brush it off, Al!” Andrea ordered.
“Yeah, Al, kill it!” Luke barked.
“Guys…” Albert whimpered, shutting his eyes.
“Al, come on! Do it before it-” I started.
But we were too late. The thing sunk its fangs into Albert. His eyes rolled up in his head and he crashed to the ground.
“...bites you,” I sighed.
Our new friend crawled onto Al’s ear and stuck its ass into it. A second later, its abdomen rippled as it laid its eggs. We all shuddered, revolted. Once the spider was finished, it dusted off its feet, jumped off Al, and ran off.
Al woke up a second later. “Uh… my head…” he groaned. “You guys, my whole head hurts.”
“Al, we need to get you to a hospital,” I said.
“Yeah!” Andrea added. “That thing just laid eggs in your ear!”
Albert didn’t seem to hear us. He just sat there, getting paler and paler. “I told you guys not to bring me in here…”
Luke had no patience for Al’s rambling. He grabbed him and threw him over his shoulder. “Come on, Al, let’s go!” Luke boomed. He ran out of the secret room, leaving us to chase after him.
...
Once we were out of the house, Luke put Albert down. “Albert, how are you feeling now?” Luke asked.
“Uh… Guh… Oh, God,” Albert groaned. His body was shaking, he looked green, and he sounded like he was having a stroke.
“Al!” Luke shouted. Me and Andrea were aghast.
“AHHHHHH! NOOOOOO!” Albert screamed, grabbing his head. A second later, his skull broke open.
We watched, horrorstruck, as thousands upon thousands of baby spiders crawled out of the hole in his head, along with his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. His corpse collapsed to the ground. The spiders dispersed, running into the woods to hide. We shrieked in terror.
Once the things were gone, we could finally catch our breath. Albert’s corpse lay on the ground, already beginning to rot. I shuddered, revolted, and turned to Luke. “Should we…” I started.
Luke shook his head, looking shell shocked. “We didn’t see shit. Got it?”
Andrea looked horrified, but she nodded assent. I had to agree. What were we going to say, that we’d been trespassing? That some kind of ancient Egyptian super spider had killed our friend? Some shitty excuse we were for friends, though.
“Let’s just run,” I sighed. Together, the three of us hightailed it out of the woods, leaving our dead friend, the abandoned manor, and the spiders behind.
...
The next day, I caught up with Luke at school. “Have you seen Andrea lately?” I asked.
Luke shook his head. “I heard she wasn’t even able to leave her room this morning.”
I sighed. I couldn’t help but feel like this whole debacle had been my fault. Mostly because it had been. But what can you do?
“What’s going to happen when they find Albert?” I asked Luke as we walked through the halls together.
Luke scoffed. “What? You think they’re going to find him? He died in the middle of nowhere. Even if they do find him, they won’t know what to make of it. They’ll probably think some psycho with an ax got him, or something. God knows there are enough of those guys out in the country. I doubt they’d suspect ancient Egyptian super spiders killed him.”
I shuddered. “Do you think the spiders are dead?”
“What? Are you kidding?” Luke growled. It was hard to tell whether he was mad at himself or at me. “No chance in hell. They were bred to live in Egyptian tombs, Maisy. They can probably survive off of anything. No, they’re still alive. And now thanks to us, they’re loose.”
I took that in. “What if they find the town?” I asked. “The things breed by laying eggs in people’s brains, Luke. They kill people. What’s going to happen?”
Luke didn’t answer.
“What if they find an airport?” I asked.
“Then the world will end, probably,” Luke replied. He sounded exhausted all of a sudden. I guess the fight had gone out of him.
I looked down, dejected. We’d done something horrible, clearly. The very future of humanity was in doubt. But at least we had each other. I put my arm around him as we walked out the doors together. 
Category:Animals 
Category:Places 
Category:Weird
Category:MalumLibrum958