Chapter 3: The Thing in the Corner

Three weeks had passed since Alex last saw Silas.

The empty web still clung to the window frame like a ghost of better times, its geometric perfection now dulled by dust and morning dew. Strands hung loose and broken, swaying in the November breeze with a forlorn quality that made Alex's chest tighten every time he looked at it.

He'd woken that morning three weeks ago to find the web abandoned, no sign of his unnaturally large companion anywhere. The piece of steak he'd left the night before—a substantial chunk that had seemed appropriate for Silas's impressive size—remained untouched on the windowsill, slowly rotting in the autumn air.

"Probably moved on to better hunting grounds," Alex had told himself that first day, trying to ignore the hollow feeling in his stomach. "Smart thing to do. Winter's coming."

But as the days stretched into weeks, the absence gnawed at him. He'd grown accustomed to their routine, to having something that needed him, something that responded to his presence. The house felt even emptier now, as if Silas had taken some essential spark of life with him when he disappeared.

Alex's work had suffered catastrophically. His manager had stopped responding to emails entirely, probably writing him off as a lost cause. The isolation that had once felt manageable now pressed against him like a physical weight. He'd created a connection, however strange, and now it was gone.

The rational part of his mind insisted this was for the best. Whatever Silas had been becoming—and Alex still couldn't fully accept the impossibility of it—had been heading toward something beyond his control. The spider's final size, nearly five inches across with legs that spanned almost a foot, had crossed the line from remarkable to terrifying.

But the lonely part of his mind, the part that had first reached out to a tiny speck on his windowsill, mourned the loss like a death.

It was the sounds that started first.

Subtle things. A scratching in the walls late at night that could have been mice or settling wood. A faint skittering that might have been branches against the roof. Sounds that old houses made, perfectly normal sounds that Alex's isolation-addled brain was probably magnifying into significance.

The feeling of being watched came next.

It started as a prickle between his shoulder blades when he stood at the kitchen sink. A sense of presence that made him turn around repeatedly, expecting to find someone behind him. The feeling intensified when he worked at his laptop, growing so strong that he'd taken to positioning himself with his back to the wall.

"Cabin fever," he diagnosed aloud, the sound of his own voice startling in the oppressive silence. "Classic symptoms. Social isolation, paranoid thoughts, auditory hallucinations."

But knowing the clinical terms didn't make the sensations go away. If anything, they seemed to intensify as the days passed. The scratching in the walls became more frequent, more purposeful. The feeling of observation grew so strong that Alex found himself avoiding certain rooms, gravitating toward spaces where he could see all the entrances.

Sleep became elusive. Every creak of the house settling, every whisper of wind through the eaves, jerked him awake with his heart pounding. During the day, exhaustion made everything feel surreal and threatening. Shadows seemed deeper, corners held too much darkness, and the air vents—God, why had he never noticed how many air vents the house had?

They were everywhere. Kitchen, living room, bedrooms, hallways. Dark rectangular openings in the ceiling and walls, covered by metal grilles that suddenly seemed inadequate, decorative rather than functional. At night, lying in bed, Alex found himself staring at the vent directly above his pillow, imagining sounds emanating from its depths.

The breaking point came on a Thursday morning in early December.

Alex had spent another sleepless night listening to phantom sounds, finally drifting off around dawn. He woke to pale winter sunlight streaming through his bedroom window and the absolute certainty that something had changed in the house. The air felt different—thicker, more oppressive. The silence had a quality of expectation, as if the house itself was holding its breath.

Coffee. He needed coffee and daylight and the mundane routine of morning to drive away the lingering dread from another restless night. Alex padded to the kitchen in his pajamas, muscle memory guiding him through the familiar motions of starting the coffee maker.

It wasn't until he turned toward the window—toward the empty web that had become his morning ritual of loss—that he saw it.

The thing in the corner.

Alex's brain refused to process what his eyes were showing him. The creature sat motionless where the kitchen wall met the ceiling, directly above the abandoned web. Its body was the size of a small cantaloupe, pale and bulbous, supported by eight impossibly long legs that pressed against the walls and ceiling like the fingers of some enormous hand.

The legs. Jesus Christ, the legs. Each one was over a foot long, segmented and covered in coarse hair that caught the morning light. They were delicate despite their size, ending in points that seemed designed for gripping, for climbing, for moving with silent precision through spaces no creature that large should be able to navigate.

But it was the eyes that stopped Alex's heart.

Multiple black orbs, each the size of a marble, arranged across what might charitably be called a head. They tracked his movement with unmistakable intelligence, alien and calculating. There was recognition in those eyes—not just awareness, but memory. Knowledge.

"Silas," Alex whispered, the name escaping his lips like a prayer or a curse.

The creature's response was immediate and terrifying. It moved.

Not with the careful, methodical pace Alex remembered from their window encounters, but with explosive speed that defied physics. One moment it was pressed against the corner, the next it was flowing across the ceiling like liquid shadow, legs finding purchase on surfaces that should have been impossible to navigate.

Alex stumbled backward, his coffee mug shattering against the linoleum as his nervous system overloaded with primal terror. The creature—Silas, his mind insisted, even as his sanity rebelled against the identification—reached the center of the kitchen ceiling and paused, suspended directly above him.

For a moment that stretched into eternity, predator and prey regarded each other across an impossible gulf of species and understanding. Those multiple eyes held Alex's gaze with an intelligence that seemed almost familiar, almost affectionate, before something else flickered behind them. Hunger, perhaps. Or curiosity about how he might taste.

Then, with the same liquid speed that had carried it across the ceiling, Silas launched himself toward the air conditioning vent above the stove.

The metal grille, which had seemed so solid and secure for the past three weeks, buckled and popped open like a tin can. The creature's bulbous body compressed and flowed through the opening with an ease that made Alex's stomach lurch. Within seconds, Silas had vanished into the ductwork, leaving only the hanging grille and the lingering impression of impossible anatomy.

The house fell silent except for Alex's ragged breathing and the frantic hammering of his heart against his ribs. Somewhere above him, in the network of ducts and crawlspaces that honeycombed his home, something the size of a melon was moving with the silence of a shadow.

Alex's legs gave out. He slumped against the kitchen counter, sliding down until he sat among the fragments of his coffee mug, staring at the violated air vent with the blank expression of someone whose world had just been rewritten.

He'd fed it. For weeks, he'd fed the thing, watched it grow, nurtured it from a harmless speck into something that belonged in his worst nightmares. And now it was inside his house—not just inside, but integrated into the structure itself, moving through spaces he couldn't reach, watching him from angles he couldn't anticipate.

The scratching sounds, the feeling of being observed, the sense of presence that had plagued him for weeks—it had all been real. Silas had been there the entire time, growing larger and bolder in the darkness between his walls, learning the layout of his home, studying his routines.

Waiting.

But waiting for what?

Alex forced himself to stand on trembling legs, his eyes never leaving the open vent. The morning sun streaming through the kitchen window seemed dimmer now, less capable of driving away shadows. Every vent in the house had become a potential point of emergence, every dark corner a possible hiding place.

His home was no longer a sanctuary. It was a web, and he was caught in the center of it, being observed by something that had grown far beyond his ability to understand or control.

Somewhere in the walls, Silas was moving. Learning. Planning.

And Alex was trapped inside with him, the creator face-to-face with his creation, unsure whether he was looking at a companion or a predator.

The distinction, he was beginning to realize, might not matter. Either way, he was no longer alone.

Either way, he was no longer safe.