"On Spiderbite Key"

Illustration by Lukasz Godlewski

**"On Spiderbite Key"** is the first tale in the fifth episode of the sixth season of the Nosleep Podcast. In it, a man recalls a story his grandfather used to tell. Written by L.O. Phillips, it has a runtime of 23:20 and was performed by Mike DelGaudio and David Cummings. It is the 643rd tale overall on the podcast.

## Summary

Burt recalls visiting his grandparents that lived on the Florida Keys while he was growing up. The grandmother, Twila, grew up on an extremely small, now-abandoned isle called "Spiderbite Key", while the grandfather grew up in Key West.

Burt explains that he loved visiting his grandparents, but was puzzled by Twila's fear of the water. Despite the fact that their cottage resided twenty feet from the ocean, she would stay in the house all day and refuse to look out the window or even get in the tub. Some nights, however, as if sleepwalking, she would leave her room and walk outside to the water's edge, staring at it. The grandfather would then have to come and collect her.

One day, the grandfather took Burt on a walk and explained to him the place where Twila grew up. Spiderbite Key was a vastly underdeveloped isle with no roads, only houses. A lot of ships used to pass through the keys on the way up the East coast, and would sometimes dock at one of them to trade or have a little fun. The residents of Spiderbite Key were a group of wreckers. They would send Twila out in a boat with a lantern to be picked up by a passing ship. She would then instruct them where not sail, in actuality sending them towards rocky sandbars that would beach the ship. The residents of Spiderbite Key would then row out to the ship, steal the cargo, and kill all the crew.

At some point, Twila caught on to what was actually happening. One night when she was sent out, she got on the ship and begged for the crew to take her with them. However, the residents of Spiderbite Key realized what happened and rowed their boats out to the ship, robbing and killing the crew anyway. Twilia jumped overboard followed by the first mate, only to accidentally drown him by standing on his shoulders. She was picked up by the residents and brought back to the Key, where a new girl was chosen for the role. A few years later, she met Burt's grandfather and moved to Colorado.

Years pass and Burt visits the keys less and less. One summer, his sister Ruby comes back in tears explaining that Twilia almost fought their grandpa when he tried to take her back inside from the ocean. After a trip to the doctor, she became doped up on pills and stayed bedridden. A year later, she dies and is buried on a grassy knoll near the house.

The morning after the funeral, Burt goes downstairs to have breakfast and looks out the window. Twila's grave has been dug up, now empty with drag marks in the sand leading from the hill, over the beach and into the water.

Even more years pass. Burt gets married and has kids, taking them down to the Keys to vacation every summer. Though he enjoys himself, whenever he paddles out in a kayak, he's afraid of putting his hand in the water because of all the horrors and dangers that could lurk down there, like whatever it was that took Twila's corpse.

## Cast

Mike DelGaudio as Burt

David Cummings as the grandfather