By David William Jurgenson

“Ty? Are you all right?” Elissa asks in a worried tone.

My girlfriend’s words break me out of my reverie. I try to smile but can only manage a grimace instead. “I’m fine.”

Elissa knits her brow. “You don’t look fine. You look like you’re worried.”

Yeah, I’m wondering if you’re going to sacrifice me to your murderous cult.

I lie. “I’m fine. Only you would be worried about me when you’re having a baby. Today it’s all about you. How are your contractions?”

“Not as frequent right now. All of the hypnotherapy techniques I learned are really helping. I’ve been controlling my breathing and meditating so I don’t feel stressed.”

Why did you join a cult? Particularly since you know how I feel about God.  I stare at her for a while. It leads to an uncomfortable silence for a long moment.

Elissa finally asks me, “Are you happy Ty?”

My stomach lurches. I’ve never been good at hiding how I feel. I respond with my own question, “Do you love me?”

She smiles. “Of course I love you.”

Liar. 

I grasp the Star of David at my neck. Please, God, in your infinite wisdom, show me the way forward so I don’t become affected by my girlfriend’s sin. After I make my prayer, I feel my nerves calm. I found the Star of David when I was looking for recycled cans a few years ago. I found it in a dumpster in North Lawndale and have kept it with me ever since.

I keep a lot of things I find in the trash. I guess I’m what you would call a dumpster-diving hoarder. In the small in-law house where my grandmother lets me stay, all of the rooms are packed with all the things I like to collect. They say you aren’t a hoarder if everything you collect is good stuff. It’s because I have OCD that I don’t like to get rid of anything.

I touch the handle of the Smith & Wesson Shield I have strapped to my back. That was another treasure I found in the dumpsters. It had blood on it when I found it. It was probably from some gang member who had gotten rid of it.

When I learned about the cult, I began bringing the gun everywhere I went. I’m surprised hospitals don’t have metal detectors. They do bag checks, but that’s about it. A person could bring a grenade into the hospital by stuffing it down their pants.

I discovered the cult Elena was a part of when she started having long, unexplained absences and her explanations didn’t add up.

An opportunity presented itself to find out one night. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom but didn’t lock her phone. I opened her Google Maps app and added myself to her location sharing. Elissa suddenly came out of the bathroom sooner than I expected and I was so embarrassed at getting caught that I kind of lost my mind. But she didn’t say anything. I don’t think she even noticed.

Weeks later, when she went to her baby shower, I looked her up on Google Maps. The location said she was at some church called The Order of the Solar Temple. I’d never heard of it. Elissa had never talked about religion. She’d never seemed into it.

Confused, I called Elissa. She cheerfully picked up and told me everyone was having a great time. They were about to play a Truth or Drink game. But it didn’t sound like a party was happening in the background.

I was so confused, I wanted to confront her right then, but then I thought about our baby. What would these people do if they knew I’d found out about them? Would they try to separate our family?

I said goodbye to Elissa and hung up the phone, shaking my head.

I did a search. The AI summary said The Order of the Solar Temple was a notorious, dangerous cult. My pulse skipped. I nervously clicked on an article from the search. 

The article said the church was founded by Joseph Di Mambro, who believed in Theosophy. The cult thought a spider god called Nyathra that resided on the star of Sirius, would be their salvation after they could travel there in a spaceship. In 1994, the church was under constant legal battles and had negative media coverage about controversial arms scandals. This led Di Mambro to decide it was time to travel to the planet of Sirius. 

Some within the cult disagreed on this course of action, so Di Mambro ordered their execution in Quebec. After their murders,  he coordinated a mass suicide of two communes in Switzerland. Then Di Mambro took his life in the Swiss village of Salvan. After that, the church was embroiled in constant legal trials and eventually broke up. But it seemed like now they had started again here in Chicago.

Elissa moans. “Oh Ty! My contractions are getting quicker! The baby’s head is facing the wrong way. It hurts real bad!”

I stand up. 

A loud beep comes from equipment behind her bed and a nurse rushes into the room. Her name tag reads MAYFIELD. “Miss Price, what’s happening? 

“The contractions are getting bad. I think the baby is coming.” 

Mayfield puts her finger into Elissa’s vagina. “Yes, I can feel you’re fully dilated. I’ll call the midwife.”

“Hold me, Ty!” I walk over to her side and look at her. Elissa grasps my hand and my skin crawls. I don’t even know who you really are.

A midwife with the name tag MORGAN strides in. “Hello, Miss Price.” Elissa nods at her, her beautiful face starting to glisten in sweat. “What are the baby’s vitals and the dilation?”

Mayfield replies, “Vitals are normal. Her dilation is at 10 centimeters.”

“Good.”

Elissa begins to cry out in pain. “I can feel it coming!”

“Take a deep breath, Miss Price. Tuck in your chin and push like you’re trying to have a bowel movement.”

Elissa begins to push, then screams wildly. “Oh my God, this hurts so bad! The head is the wrong way.”

“It’s going to be okay, Miss Price. It’s perfectly normal. I’m going to examine you right now, okay?” Morgan puts her finger into her vagina, examining Elissa, then suddenly winces in pain. Morgan withdraws her finger and it’s covered in blood. She stares at her finger, her mouth opens, and she stumbles back. Morgan collapses into a chair, pleading with Mayfield to help her.

Mayfield yelps and rushes to Morgan. She finds a towel and applies it.

What the hell just happened? Did the baby bite Morgan? How is that even possible?  I see the flesh on Elissa’s belly move. Like something is swimming below the surface. Elissa cries out in pain. The skin around her groin tears and then a long, hairy arm bursts out of her skin. Multiple alarms begin sounding from the equipment around her.

Dread spears my gut. This is blasphemy! What sacrilege did the cult do to you? 

Elissa raises her eyebrows, parts her lips, looking at me with wide, fragile eyes so soft that they almost seem childish. She tries to speak but what comes out instead is just a wet gurgle.

Then a tentacle bursts out of her mouth. The EKG monitor emits a piercing flatline tone just as a dozen nurses rush into the room.

A lead nurse with a name tag JOHNSON is the first one into the room, She asks, “What the hell is going on in here?”

Mayfield points a shaking finger at Elissa.

Johnson stares where Mayfield is pointing and her mouth drops open. Four dark, velvety, skeletal-like arms violently burst out of Elissa’s vagina and chest. A fifth spindly arm breaks out, and then another. 

My heart plummets. My throat is tight and I feel tears swimming in my eyes. Oh Elissa. What have they done to you? Did you let them cast satanic magic on our baby?

Elissa’s body starts trembling and shaking violently. A massive, black tarantula, covered in blood and gore everywhere, emerges from the body and Elissa’s corpse rolls to the floor.

The nurses scream.

The creature’s huge blood-red eyes flick to me and my heart trips. Two giant fangs from its face appear, revealing a slit beneath. Chills run up and down my body. I realize that the slit is the thing’s mouth – it’s trying to speak. My mouth drops open as the creature says in Elissa’s voice, “Please Ty, help me!” 

The creature’s voice changes, becoming a dark, stentorian, male voice. “You can’t help her anymore Ty! She has become part of me now!”

Is this what these psychotic cult followers worship? A spider deity? What did they call it? Nyathra? This feels like I’m in a nightmare.

“My devotees cast a spell that allowed me to possess this child and be born upon this planet. Now I shall be able to grant them eternal life!”

I find the courage to speak. “You mean all the cultists who died as sacrifices? Begone demon! God will strike you down!”

Mayfield runs for the door. Nyathra shoots a thick white mucus from a spinneret then a silky white goo covers the door. Mayfield tries to open the door but it won’t budge. She screams, “It’s stuck! There’s no way out!”

“Yesssss!” Nyathra purs. “But with all of your sacrifices, you will all live forever!”

I pull my nine out of the back of my pants. I can’t act in time. The monster leaps across the room and knocks Morgan down onto the floor. Morgan tries to struggle but it pins her down with its strong, spindly legs. Then the tarantula’s mandibles begin to feed on her neck, drinking her blood while Morgan screams.

The steel of the gun feels slick against my hands as I raise it at the creature. I pull the trigger and the gun booms. The shot barely grazes the monster. It continues feeding, seeming more annoyed than anything else. We have to get out of here quick or we’re not going to make it. 

I fire my gun at the door, destroying the webbing. “RUN! Everybody get out of here as fast as you can!”

Mayfield yanks open the door and everyone runs out after her.

Nyathra’s head snaps at the sound of the gun, narrowing his eyes. “That was a mistake! You’re going to pay for that. Now it’s time for you to join your whore girlfriend!”

“Shut up, demon! Don’t you dare say such blasphemous things about Elissa!”

The creature hisses. “She said you were bad in bed. She didn’t want to leave you so we helped her because you were lacking.”

“Liar! You used her just like you used all of the others!”

Nyathra puts Morgan down and crouches. I grab a mobile table and push it at him just as he begins to launch himself into the air. The table clips his legs and he tumbles to the ground, missing me.

I race for the doorway. As I run, I hear Nyathra land on the wall. He crawls up to the ceiling and starts skittering toward me upside down.

Outside the room, I see an abandoned wheelchair with two oxygen tanks. I shut the door, blockading it with the wheelchair. I engage both of the parking brakes, locking it into place. Hopefully, that will keep it in there long enough for me to buy some time.

There is a thudding on the door, but it holds. I look around at the nurses’ station. Several women are standing at desks with their mouths open, staring at the gun in my hand. 

I speak with a tremor. “Run! You don’t want to be here when that thing gets out!”

The door starts to splinter. All of them hurriedly get up and begin to run toward the hallway.

A tentacle bursts through the door and I begin to back away. It feels warm in here. I feel a drop of sweat slide down my chest. What the hell am I going to do?

I look at the oxygen tanks resting on the wheelchair and that gives me an idea. I aim at the tanks and begins firing. One of the tanks punctures and then steam starts hissing out of it. After two more shots, a bullet sparks the metal.

Suddenly a huge orange fireball explodes from the wheelchair, shaking the hallway.  The blast blows the door off and sends the wheelchair flying into the air. Flames cover the hospital, licking upon the floor and spreading onto the wall.

God, I hope that killed it. I don’t want to go back.

Something moves inside the hospital room. At first, it looks like flames. but then I see it is the monster, still alive and completely lit up in flames like a torch.

It drags itself by two legs, the others are burnt and useless. It’s coming straight towards me. I raise the gun but it clicks. I can now hear my heart pounding in my ears.

I start to run but its webbing curls around my feet and drags me to the floor. The spider reels me towards it, like a fish on a pole.

Its vocal cords are melted and it is speaking in a strange, warbling wheeze, “NOW…YOU…DIE!”

Its fangs open wide and its slit of a mouth becomes a gaping maw. I can feel its hot breath on me as I get close to its mouth. As I’m about to die, I pray that God will save me.  But then the monster stops and begins screaming in agony.  

Is the monster dying from the fire?

The creature is looking at something on me. I look down to see that the Star of David is glowing like a lantern upon my neck.

“AWAY…IT…BURNS!!”

A jolt runs through my body. I rip the Star of David off my neck. 

“NO!” Nyathra recoils.

“Be gone, demon! Leave this world and don’t ever return!”

I plunge the Star of David into its face. Steam rises everywhere off the creature as it begins to scream. 

I press the star harder. Suddenly, the monster’s voice changes, turning into Elissa’s voice, but with a strange wheeze, “Ty! Please…don’t…you’re killing me!”

I choke down a sob. “I’m sorry, Elissa. I wish I could stop. But I can’t.” The room blurs as tears fill my eyes. “This is the only way.”

There is a final deafening roar. Then the monster stops moving. A moment later a strange light emerges out of the body. 

A red ghost swirls out of the creature, screaming angrily, followed in its wake by dozens of smaller white ghosts. The ghosts are pulled below into the floor, disappearing down below into the dark netherworld. I hear the sound of the ghosts screaming in agony.

I can make out Elissa’s voice among them. The pain in her voice is going to haunt my dreams forever.

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David William Jurgenson got his English writing minor at the University of San Francisco. He was an exchange student at Oxford University, England, where he studied fiction writing. David plays drums in a rock band in Northern California and lives with his wife Kat and stepson Alex in Rohnert Park