Chapter 8 Josie
JOSIE
Creeping out my front door with dog food in hand, I quickly made my way to the corner of the house, pressing my body against the siding. Milo sat at the steps of Tennessee’s porch, his chin resting on his paws as he sulked.
The poor dog was getting no love from Tennessee, and he was refusing to take care of him. Hence, the reason I was playing James Bond at seven in the morning when I was supposed to be getting ready for work.
The moment I stepped away from the house, Milo’s ears perked up and he jumped to his feet.
“Shh!” I hissed, hoping he wouldn’t give me away.
As if Milo understood exactly what I was doing, he sat, his tail beating the ground as he waited patiently.
“Who’s a good dog?” I asked, bending down to run my fingers through the dog’s matted fur. The poor guy was in desperate need of a bath and probably a haircut, but he wouldn’t come over to my house.
No, he was one hundred percent Tennessee’s dog, even if the man didn’t want the dog coming anywhere near him. After pouring a generous amount of food in his dish, I gave him a few more rubs and was just about to leave when I heard the door handle jiggle.
Panic rushed through me at the thought of getting caught sneaking JR’s dog food. Scrambling under the gap between his stairs and the porch, I hid in the dark, praying nothing else was under here with me.
“Damn dog,” he muttered as he thunked down the steps. “Where the hell did you get food?”
Milo stopped eating in favor of running over to Tennessee and rubbing up against his leg.
“I’m not your owner,” he scowled. “Go find someone else’s porch to sit by.”
A chuckle nearly escaped my lips, but that laughter was quickly squashed when a spider made its way down from his web, hovering right in front of me.
God, I was so stupid for coming over here, and even more foolish for hiding under his porch. I knew creepy crawly things would be hiding under here, and yet I did it anyway.
Maybe there was another way out of here. Another creepy, dark passage under the porch that would be filled with even more spiders, more webs, and other disgusting insects that would no doubt crawl over my body, down my shirt, and burrow into my belly button. Because that’s what creepy crawlies did.
A whimper left my lips as I considered all the possible places a bug might decide to make a home on my body.
Just the thought sent shivers down my spine.
I couldn’t handle the pressure. I couldn’t stay silent, not when I was on the verge of being attacked by seven-foot spiders and being wrapped in their giant webs for dinner tonight.
“I gotta get outta here,” I whispered, my panic growing by the second.
I inched away from the spider, ready to flee, when I spotted two yellow eyes watching me from the other end of the passage under the porch.
Oh, God. It was a demon spider. With big beady eyes, ready to devour me and eat me for lunch. I was about to flee when I remembered the spider dangling from the porch. I nearly crawled right into it.
I was trapped. Trapped, with nowhere to go.
I would die under this porch and they would only find my remains when I started to stink.
Except the animals and spiders would devour every last bit of my remains, so the only way I would actually be found was when this old house fell down and they started the cleanup.
They’d find my bones, but have no idea how I actually died.
The horror of it all was too much. I couldn’t take it.
“Help!” I screamed.
Spots danced in front of my eyes and the spider became one of those black blobs. I could no longer differentiate between the things that were going to kill me and the signs of passing out.
“Someone help!” I shouted. “Tennessee!”
Boots pounded on the porch until the very man was kneeling right at the opening. I’d never been so grateful to see his face in all my life. And yet, there was a spider blocking my exit. There was no way to get out.
Ever.
I was trapped.
“What the hell are you doing under there?”
“Get the spider! You have to get the spider!” I screeched.
“Was it you? Were you feeding the damn dog?”
But the spider was getting bigger and bigger, and my panic was quickly turning into something more dangerous. I was going to pass out.
“Spider. Spider!” I screamed, sure I wasn’t going to make it more than thirty seconds longer. A minute tops, if I was really lucky.
“Why the hell have you been feeding that dog? It’s not mine!” he shouted.
I backed up a scant inch, but then remembered the beady eyes at the other end. Had they come closer? I was pretty sure they had. It was creeping up on me, waiting for me to make my move, and then it would attack. I’d never see the light of day again.
I could barely hear anything else over the roaring of my own thoughts. I vaguely heard Tennessee still talking, but whatever he was saying was lost on me.
“Josie!”
The shouting of my name finally dragged my attention back to the man kneeling in front of the opening.
“If you don’t get your ass out from under my porch—”
“There’s a spider. A huge spider!” I shouted. “Can’t you see it? I’m trapped! I’m never getting out of here!”
“You’re not trapped. You just have to move toward me.”
“Toward the spider, you mean. And then it’ll crawl under my clothes and into my hair. I’ll have to shave my head and look like a man for the next year. Everyone will start calling me Joe instead of Josie!”
“You’re panicking,” he said, his voice cool as a cucumber.
“You think? Of course, I’m panicking! A spider is trying to attack me.”
“I hate to point this out, but you’re the one who crawled under my porch.”
“What the hell is going on here?”
Maverick. That was Maverick. I was saved. “Help! Maverick, you have to save me! I’m being attacked by spiders!”
“She’s not being attacked.”
“Why is she under your porch?”
“Because she’s Josie.”
I could only make out who was talking by the sounds of their voices, but the condescension in Tennessee’s voice was loud and clear.
“Maverick, there’s something under here that really wants to eat me!”
“Then crawl out,” he said, bending over so I could finally see his face.
“Get a broom! No, a long stick!”
“Why a stick?”
“Because if you use a broom, you’ll have to throw it out!” I shouted, my heart thumping wildly.
God, I couldn’t take another second of this. Rustling drew my attention and I screamed, letting out the girliest, loudest sound that ever left my lips. But what else was I to do when something was crawling toward me?
“Josie, look at me!” Tennessee commanded.
My head snapped to the sound of his rough voice. I tried my best to focus on him when I really wanted to turn and see what was crawling toward me.
“Stop looking over there. Just look at me.”
“But if I look at you, I have to look at the spider. And the spider is preventing me from getting away from the giant thing with big eyes coming toward me!” I screamed. “It’s probably Aragog or some equally horrendous spider.”
“What the hell is Aragog?”
“The gigantic spider from Harry Potter! Don’t you ever watch movies? That thing could have killed me, and its sister, or whatever it is, is about to crawl over here and wrap me up in her web for dinner. This is the last time you’ll ever see me!”
“Okay, there are no spiders big enough to wrap you in a gigantic web.”
“You haven’t seen the size of this one!”
“Who’s hiding under the porch?”
“The neighbor.”
“Ah, well, we always knew she was a little out there.”
Neighbors were swarming around the porch, mocking me as I tried desperately not to lose my shit. There was no getting out of here. I was going to die young and alone. Under a porch.
This was a place reserved for serial killers.
“Hey, look, look, look!” Tennessee shouted, drawing my attention. “Look, I’m going to reach in and squish the spider.”
“What?” I screeched. “You’re insane! You can’t do that!”
But he didn’t listen to me. His hand wrapped around the spider blocking my entrance, and he squished.
I screamed. Lord, did I scream. Vomit rose in my throat and it took every ounce of willpower to keep from throwing up in the dirt under his porch. But I couldn’t panic right now. There were beady eyes coming toward me and my exit was finally clear.
Scrambling forward, I shoved myself through the tiny gap under the steps and hurled myself onto the grass, rolling around to get off or squash any other bugs that might be attaching themselves to me at this very moment.
“Josie!”
I felt his hands on me, and then I really freaked out.
“Don’t touch me!” I shot to my feet, defending myself to the very end. “Keep your spider guts away from me. How could you do that?”
“Do what?” he asked, his eyes wide as he watched me completely melt down.
“You reached in and—” Just the sight of his hands had me gagging hard. I bent over, heaving as I imagined the squished spider guts sticking to every inch of his palms.
“Okay, whatever the hell is going on here, you need to calm the fuck down.”
His hand touched my back, and I lost it. I flung myself away from him, hitting the ground hard as I tripped over something in the yard. Scrambling to get away from him, the panic threatened to overwhelm me.
“I—I need to calm down?” I shouted incredulously. “You! You are covered in spider guts, and you tried to touch me!”
“I tried to help you,” he scoffed. “Why were you even under my porch?”
“Because I was hiding from you!”
“Obviously,” he retorted. “Because of the dog food, right? You’ve been feeding the damn dog.”
“Because he thinks he’s your dog!”
Maverick stepped in between us, holding up his hands at both of us. “Alright, let’s just calm down and take a moment to breathe.”
“I’ll breathe when he washes his hands!”
“Me? You were under there with its nest. You probably have spider eggs in your hair.”
“Nice,” Maverick snapped at him.
“Hey, she crawled under there. And all because she was feeding a damn dog, tempting him to stay at my house.”
“I wasn’t tempting him to stay anywhere!” I snapped. “He was always sitting outside your house, so I brought him food.”
“Bring it in front of your own house,” Tennessee snapped.
“Okay, I can see this friendly neighborhood dispute is only going to escalate. Josie, how about you…” His eyes trailed up and down my body before he winced at the state of my body. “Take a nice, hot shower. I’m sure you’ll feel better when you don’t feel like a dirt pile.”
“Fine, but tell him to take care of Milo.”
“Who the hell is Milo?” Tennessee asked.
“Your dog!”
“He’s not my dog. Just because he wandered onto my property doesn’t make him my dog.”
I started forward, but Maverick put both hands up, stopping me from making a move to seriously hurt the man in front of me.
“Alright, darlin’. Now, we can all see that you’re upset. The whole neighborhood is watching,” he stressed.
I finally tore my eyes from my unruly neighbor and looked around at the various people lining the streets, not daring to get any closer in case the crazy apothecary lady lost it and put a hex on all of them.
“Maybe you should go home and get cleaned up.”
“Right,” I nodded.
“And put on some cheery music. It’s not like you to yell at anyone.”
“Well, I haven’t had my tea today.”
He smiled kindly at me, pressing his hand gently to my shoulder. “See? A nice cup of tea will solve everything.”
The tension in my body started to relax as he walked me back to my house. Right, a hot shower and a cup of tea would make everything better. I just had to scrub every inch of my body, wash my hair a thousand times, and drink at least three cups of herbal tea. Then I might feel normal.
“Okay,” he chuckled. “All good now?”
Giving him my best smile, I tried not to be too embarrassed about my freakout. After all, I really could have been killed by the massive spider hiding under the porch.
“Thanks, Sheriff.”
“Anytime.”
I climbed the steps to my house and walked inside. Sawyer was just walking down the hall, rubbing his eyes.
“What the hell happened to you?”