Page 25 of Beware of Hodags

RACHEL

We exit the automatic doors to a changed sky. The sunshine is gone. It’s rapidly approaching dark. My first workday will be ending in twenty minutes, and my boss appears to be mortal enemies with an entire clan of people in this town, which includes my mate.

I’ve fallen behind Mirk, who’s pushing the cart across the lot. He slows his pace until we’re abreast of each other. “Want to grab a bite to eat?” he asks, and tips his head to Tula’s restaurant next door.

“No, I’ve got plans after work. And for twenty more minutes you’re still paying me to work. Plus I can’t go to a restaurant on your dime. Thanks though.”

With a distracted nod he aims the cart for the back doors of his truck cab. “What are you doing after work?” He unlocks and starts transferring bags to the rear passenger area, waving me off when I try to help.

Clutching my purse strap, I bounce on the balls of my sneakers. “Maybe a movie with Shepard.”

Mirk’s back is to me as he shifts around a twenty-five-pound bag of sugar he just loaded onto the floor in front of the rear seats. “Then what?”

Did he not hear Shepard flirting with me during my break time? I give the back of his head an uncomfortable look. “…Other things with Shepard.”

Because I’m watching him, I don’t miss the way his shoulders snap tight .

“We’re together,” I add lamely, realizing how sudden that has to seem to someone who doesn’t know about mate bonds.

Although if Mirk knows what hodags are… is he a shifter too? If he is, why can’t I smell him? I feel my forehead wrinkle. What shifters don’t have a scent?

When Mirk straightens and twists to grab the flour, I see his jaw has gone rock hard.

Uncomfortable, I inch for my door. “I’m going to get inside.”

He turns enough to meet my gaze, acknowledging that he's heard me. But the second his stare clashes with mine, a chill runs down my back. His eyes have gone arctic. “Yeah,” he says tightly. “Get in the truck.”

***

It’s a fun ride. Mirk has gone monosyllabic so I stop trying to make conversation. I’m so relieved when he turns onto his drive that I exhale a breath of relief before I can stop it.

Mirk doesn’t react.

His headlights illuminate the welcome sign. Which, in the dark like this, looks downright eerie.

Somebody used glow in the dark paint for the eyes of the wolf… and they gave it eight eyes.

I squint at it. Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Suddenly all the elements fall into place and my brain stops trying to reject what’s so oddly depicted. The wolf's messed-up legs aren’t messed up after all—they’re spider legs. It’s not a wolf on the sign at all but a wolf-looking spider.

My skin prickles. I turn a thoroughly confused, slightly unnerved look on my boss. “Your family immortalized a creepy bog worker on your farm sign? Why not just berries?”

Mirk’s face is stony. “It’s our name. Lúkos is Neo-Latin for wolf. Derived from Lúkos is Lycosid, which is Latin for spiders of the family Lycosidae. Wolf spiders. ”

“Wow, that’s weir—er, wild. What are the odds a family gets—” cursed with “—the same last name as a—” ravenous “—family of spiders and they’re the exact same spiders the family later cultivates on their farm?” I blink. “It’s like it was destiny.” A screwed-up destiny, but nonetheless…

“Yeah. Destiny,” he agrees flatly, his voice a little stiff.

I go silent.

A muscle working in his jaw, Mirk drives us past all the cranberry collecting equipment, which has been moved up closer in the general direction of his house and somehow looks a little sinister, all silent and still as we roll past it into the farmyard, throwing shadows with the headlights.

I expect Mirk to stop at the store for easy unloading but instead, he drives up the embankment leading to the towering second story of his barn, which stands with its two massively built doors wide open.

I have to marvel at them; the doors have to be fifteen feet tall and at least ten feet wide.

Even though I’m stronger than a human, I bet I couldn’t lift one by myself.

The fact that human men routinely built and hung these? Impressive.

Our truck’s nose reaches the doorway, revealing a wide open floor ahead—and I consider that the haylofts of Gothic-style barns are designed so masterfully that they manage to rival the width of a football field in floor space without sacrificing an inch of it to support columns.

This had to be handy when stacking hundreds if not potentially thousands of hay bales in the farm days of yore.

There aren’t any hay bales in here now.

With an ease that speaks to a lifetime of practice, Mirk’s boot pets the accelerator just enough to goose us right in. His braking is also commendable: I don't even rock forward as we come to a stop. He puts the truck in park.

Deeper in the haymow, the headlights illuminate something strange. But Mirk flicks the headlights off and whatever I saw disappears in the darkened belly of the barn .

When he kills the engine, I shoot him an uncomfortable smile and ostensibly cast a glance through the windows.

I can’t make out much but I wasn’t exaggerating about this loft rivaling the width of a football field.

After years of pacing a gridiron, my eye clocks this place as a solid forty feet wide and nearly twice that in length.

A set of hay wagons hitched to teams of draft horses from farming days of yore or modern day tractors could easily fit in here, and in that burst of headlight’s light, I saw what looked like maybe some silver-tarped machinery in the corner.

A tarped something anyway. I also caught that there’s an old tire suspended from the soaring rafters by a timeworn rope.

A tire swing in a barn full of impact-absorbing hay? That had to have been awesome fun.

And yet, as I sit here peering into the darkness, the vibe of this place is strangely sinister.

Get out of the truck, I tell myself.

I don’t move.

Something is bothering me. Maybe it’s that Mirk isn’t moving either and the stillness is unnatural.

It’s just because it’s dark in here, I point out to myself.

Which is weird, now that I think about it.

My eyes are five times better than a human’s in low light, and thanks to the way the wide boards that side the barn are intentionally gapped, enough yard light is filtering through that I can make out some things, like old wooden ladders that are leaned up against the tall walls.

Two or three of them run all the way up to the roof.

As my eyes adjust further, I see rusting steel milk canisters are abandoned near the wall, a couple of them stacked, one on its side.

Ten Gallon is stamped across the fronts of them.

And beside them is something strange. Something crisscrossing…

I can’t make it out. But it’s making my lizard brain tingle with alarm.

“Spooky,” I breathe.

Mirk stiffly turns his head. His face is still tight with what might be anger or stress, but since he’s acknowledged me, I assume he wants me to elaborate so I gesture through the window to encompass his wynorrific old barn.

“No offense,” I add, looking around in an effort to break eye contact and lessen the tension I’m feeling. “I guess a big barn like this is bound to be unsettling in the dark.”

The jangle of metal snaps my attention back to Mirk.

He’s pocketing his truck keys. He doesn’t look at me when he says heavily, “Let’s go.”

My brain is trying to run an assessment to figure out what it is about Mirk’s demeanor that’s tickling my spidey senses, but before I can figure anything out, the back half of my brain pipes up that he might try to be a gentleman and offer to open my door again so I hurry out of the truck.

As I shut the door, I bring my phone up to check the time.

I exhale in relief. My shift has officially ended.

Still, politeness forces me to offer, “Would you like a hand unloading?”

“No,” Mirk replies. He’s pacing by his truck’s tailgate near the open barn doors. His agitation is starting to freak me out.

Okaaay then. “Alright. Well, my first day on the job has officially reached its end. Thanks again for hiring me. See you tomorrow!” I toss him a wave and ease around him with the goal of slipping outside to freedom.

Mirk steps in front of me, blocking my escape.

Taken aback, I give him a strained smile.

But I can’t shake the bad feeling I’m getting.

I’m sure I’m overreacting but my senses are going haywire.

I risk taking my eyes off him just long enough to dart a wild-eyed look down at my phone’s face.

My heart starts beating a little faster to see the No service icon at the top corner.

It feels like a wise move to remind Mirk that I have someone waiting for me. “Is there something more you wanted to discuss? Can we step outside so I can wave to Shepard? If he’s not already here, he should pull up any second to pick me up. ”

Mirk’s face doesn’t show a flicker of emotion. “He can try.”

“Pardon?”

Still blocking my way with his body, Mirk reaches for the wall and the air fills with clicks as he knocks a panel of light switches on, flooding the barn interior with harsh illumination.

As I adjust to this, he turns and heaves the humongous barn doors shut with an unsettling clang.

I back away from him. “Mirk?”

Nostrils flaring, he motions behind me.

I whirl around, half afraid something terrifying snuck up on me.

My lungs seize. What was caught in his headlights a minute ago is now revealed.

The barn is strewn with what my forebrain tries to rationalize is white rope—not hemp, but a soft cordage, like the kind they use with yachts.

The strands go the length of the barn and have to be the width of a man’s thumb.

A lot of them are near ground level, like triplines.

I go still. Because in the corner of the barn, it isn’t a white tarp draped over equipment like I assumed.

It’s a giant white silk rope-covered… funnel.

Sort of like the funnels all of the farm spiders made on the hill to catch dew.

Just… bigger.

So, so much bigger.

Head whipping to Mirk, I stare up at him in dawning horror.

Expression closed off, he looks around his barn too. Maybe he’s trying to see it like a stranger might see it. The way the floor is covered in gossamer draglines that look too much like spiderwebbing for anyone to rationalize away. “I didn’t want to do this,” he grinds out.

My throat tightens. “Do… what?”

Mirk rubs the flat of his hand along the top of his arm, then back down, making the hairs rise. A lot of hairs. Really dark, thickening hairs. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. ”

“W-what are you sorry for?”

Something in his eyes changes. The glint of determination I see in them has my stomach dropping.

But it’s the way his pupils enlarge, swallowing up his irises.

They keep enlarging, until the whites of his eyes are gone—and then his eyeballs start to bulge, and stiff black hairs poke out all over his face.

I back up.

In reaction, Mirk scowls—and to my terror, he begins to stalk toward me.