February 10th, 2025
I think I finally have a few moments of lucidity. I must recount the events of the past week. There is much to tell.
In the following day, I had many arguments with Tara, my new grad student friend. She seemed convinced that the trip was too dangerous to take. She insisted that, even if we were we to make the trip, we’d need to hire a sizeable security cotingent.
She was right on all counts. I couldn’t have known how right she was. But I needed to find out. I couldn’t wait over a year for some dull exploratory committee full of ‘academics’ to decide it was a bad idea. So I decided to strike out on my own.
As I moved further and further beyond the edge of civilization, following Tara’s instructions as closely as I could, I became less and less sure of myself and my navigational skills. There came a time when, in a wilderness full of ancient webs and unexplored corners, I resolved to find someone to inquire about direction. I moved from web to web, tapping gently and hoping to rouse some living spider on these ancient homes from times long forgotten.
I continued to wander from house to house, understandably rousing no one, when I began to hear a sick screeching noise above, its source hidden behind massive timbers. I skittered up the wall toward the sound.
The timber was abuzz with excitement. Spider, centipede and fly buzzed around a small web wrapped round a massive centipede. All manner of creatures chanted “Doontha Shoar Drian Wetcha” in shrieking voices, somehow dancing the same dance in unison despite the differing numbers and structure of limbs. In the center of the circle, a fly and a spider each dipped their heads down, each partaking of the flesh of the massive centipede in the center.
A spider caught eyes with me, motioning me toward him with one pedipalp. As I approached, I noticed a string of the ancient silk tied around his head.
“Hey! What brings you out to the Shoar?”
“I’m looking for the source of that dark silk you’ve got there.”
A look of excitement crossed the friendly spider’s face. Something about the excitement caused a deep dread to well up in my thorax. My muscles tensed as I reflected on how one scurries away from dread.
“The Shoar Drian. I will take you to receive the holy thread from the great God Doontha. Doontha Shoar Drian Wetcha!”
The Shoar Drian. Interesting. Terrifying, but interesting.
“Have you ever heard a little verse that starts ‘The itsy bitsy spider?’”
The whole beam went silent.
Moments later, like fog flowing over a pond, a series of whispers cascaded across the wild goings on.
“The forbidden verse.”
“Isty Bitsy”
“Shoar Spider”
After a few seconds everything went silent. Every eye in the room simultaneously turned toward me.
After an ITSY BITSY moment, the spider from the center stalked UP to me.
“You know of the Doontha?” He asked.
“No. I’m just trying to figure out what my brother experienced that WASHED him OUT.”
I produced the dark strand.
A gasp flowed through the crowd.
“Only one outsider has ever returned from Shoar Drian. We thought he was the Shoar Spider of the prophecies”
Little did I know THE ITSY BITSY
THE ITSY BITSY SPIDER
DOONTHA SHOAR DRIAN WETCHA
UP THE WATER SPOUT
THE RAIN
THE RAIN
#
I’m not sure of the date. But the moments of clarity are getting fewer and farther between. I don’t have much time, but I must finish this in hopes someone will find it and know what happened.
The head spider escorted me on a winding route through the walls and down to a small opening into a dark cavern.
I poked my head out into the dark expanse. It was difficult to make anything out in the massive cavernous expanses of the brightlands, dark though they were at the moment.
Just past the opening I could just make out what looked like some kind of web. Curiosity overtaking me, I inched my way toward the tangle of threads, out from the protection of the walls and the timbers. The narrow flab slapped back against the wall the moment I exited, closing my entrance perhaps forever.
I creeped toward the bramble of strange silk. I reached out with my forelegs, feeling the silk, but found no purchase. I moved my head closer to inspect.
The silk weaved over and back over itself in some impossible calculus, threading in and out with a foreign geometry, concealing dark truths of whatever strange spider created it.
“Get a thread and join us!” A voice called out from behind the tiny flap.
But before I could contemplate the meaning or the dark machinations of whoever built the foreign structure before me the brightest light I’d ever seen flooded my eyes
Whispers approached from behind the wall.
“The Brightlands”
“He truly is the Shoar Spider”
“The Doontha!”
I looked down across the titanic structure, smooth and almost non-euclidian in how it curved into some massive ovular sculpture. At the opposite end of the cavern, massive structures of shapes lost to time lined the wall, calling out to some use by massive, ancient, and unknown Gods.
Below the scultpures, another small web of unknown threads sat intertwined with a reflective circle, pockmarked with massive holes at regular intervals. Perhaps some primitive house of worship.
I made my way toward the shiny circle, feeling the strange smooth surface barely catch my claws as I walked.
I began to feel massive tremors. The ground shook. Soon I encountered the Doontha. A massive fleshy spider with massive cylindrical head of unknown height hovered high above me, frozen on the smooth surface of this cylindrical cavern.
I cowed at the sheer scale of it. The ancient God before me, partially emanating from the light of a realm beyond, clutched at one of the structures above on the wall.
In a voice so loud and low that I didn’t so much hear as feel it, the words emanated from a realm beyond: “Doontha Shoar Drian Wetcha, Shoar Spider.” Slowly, then quickly, the torrent started. Water began to pour past my feet, then started rushing over my body. I lost grip with the floor, floating toward the house of worship entangled in the metal circle. I held on with all my strength, straining to remain upright as wave after wave poured over me through the holes in the floor below my house of worship.
I cried out, “O great Doontha! Spare me! Spare me and I shall worship only you. I repeat your holy words: Doontha Shoar Drian Wetcha! Please allow me to survive.”
The torrents of water became intermittent, as if to show me something. I saw a dry spot nearby, skittering there as quickly as I could in the short breaks between torrents of water.
Then I was given the greatest gift possible. A window opened into the bright light of the heavens. What stood before me was more massive and beyond my comprehension to describe. The beauty of the twisted spider god before me broke my mind.
This is what drove my brother mad. This is what drives me mad: the inconceivable uncaring god whose sight pulls my mind apart. I can’t go back to the world. I can’t leave the sight of the ancient one.
The ground vibrated with an enormous song as I basked in the light of the elder god.
THE ITSY BITSY SPIDER WENT UP THE WATER SPOUT
DOWN CAME THE RAIN AND WASHED THE SPIDER OUT
OUT CAME THE SUN AND DRIED UP ALL THE RAIN
AND THE ITSY BITSY SPIDER WENT UP THE SPOUT AGAIN
I must go. I’m feeling the need again to worship at the great dark web. I hope this diary finds someone, so you’ll know what happ– so you’ll know th GLORY.
#
I woke up in the morning, groggy as always. I lumbered down the stairs toward the bathroom, flipping the light on as I went in. Poking my hand in to turn on the water, I noticed a spider on the floor of the bathtub. I turned on the shower head, directing water to where the spider was so I could wash him down the drain if possible. I hoped, at least, to move the spider somewhere he wouldn’t bother so I could shower in peace.
I called out gently, “Down the shower drain with ya, shower spider,” washing the spider toward the drain. He didn’t fall down the drain, but where he stood was out of the way enough.
I reached down and grabbed the bunch of hair tangled into the drain, and stuck it to the edge of the tub with the rest of it. I began showering, mind wandering to my shower spider. I looked down, singing the itsy bitsy spider at it.
Bryan Appley 