Arachnids of Ghent
It was approaching midnight on the 247th floor, and ELO’s “Do Ya” was distorting the aging speakers. The big woofers over his desk could handle it, but the little horns in the hallways and toilets, which had been installed decades before to pipe in light, bass-free sounds, were beginning to give out. Jaromír had done neither powder nor pill in years, but the proper classical tune at sufficient volume would occasionally shake just enough residual partypoeder loose from his rafters to light up his synapses and keep him entertained, as well as intensely and obsessively on task. If he had to be sober as a judge while trapped in an office in the sky on a Saturday night, he might as well live it up any way he could.
As it was well past his contracted daytime watch hours, he’d decided to rent a little three-and-a-half-crown crawler and explore the city at ground level. It was a cheap way to sightsee, and was generally much more tolerated than the more expensive (and fragile) flight-enabled ones, most of which were banned from flying over the historic district anyway. He kept to the right-hand edge of the unmanned objects lane to let the delivery rollers whizz safely past. He had no particular destination or plan in mind, other than to wander in the general direction of the river.
The walker had a sticky servo, which pulled it to the left as it walked, as well as some issue with the camera – a loose connection that caused momentary bursts of static when the walker was jarred or bumped. At one point, one of its little feet got stuck in some crack or gap; he tried to look down at it but it was just offscreen. Just when he was sure he’d have to activate the distress beacon, it managed to pull free and continue its riverward lurch.
The Leie is beautiful at night when the stars are out. Visit it for me when you’re planetside, you booze-soaked pigeon. The words of de Vliet, a pilot whose family was from Ghent, had stuck with him because the majority of urban rivers he’d seen had been gaudy neon washes with throngs of drunken tourists.
#
Joris took a deep draught of Obstbrand from his wooden cup and let it run its warm, burning way down his throat. He inhaled the dying candles, the spilled cordials, the warm waft of mildew drifting up from the trapdoor Miette had opened when she went down to grab a new bottle of jenever. Running through it all was a thin but ubiquitous melange of sweat, perfume, and desperation: the whorehouse triptych.
Ghent was a stockyard, and these were cattle to be fed and fattened, right up until the day they weren’t. Sometimes some of the cattle forgot they were cattle and thought themselves people, even daring to raise their hands or voices to him, whose brother owned half of Antwerp, despite living in its pale, hemophiliac twin, sprawled over the banks of a few dirty rivers.
Lilou was the worst of the lot, feigning innocence and coyness and all the while just trying to drag out the drinks and tips and endless cajoling. She needed training, and by God he’d be the one to do it once he got this final drink in him.
#
As the walker made its ambling way toward the river, he managed to achieve a sort of equilibrium with it, where a corrective tap every few seconds kept it moving along a relatively straight path. Slowly but surely, he left the Groot Vleeshuis behind and approached the bridge. As it drew closer, he saw something dark looming ahead where the bridge should have been: workmen, silhouetted against bright floodlights. The whole bridge appeared to be blocked off by an imposing metal wall.
He’d come this far, and by god he was going to see the river if it was the last thing his limping little contraption did. He recalled seeing steps leading down from the roadway, presumably to the riverside walk, just past the Groot Vleeshuis. He wasn’t sure the spider would make it down one stair, let alone a whole staircase, but he didn’t have much to lose at this point, and had already written off his deposit as a lost cause.
#
The candle burned lower and lower, but refused to go out. Segerus had told himself he would go as soon as the flame fizzled out, but that had been over an hour ago, and here he was, sipping his sixth or seventh drink. At the other side of the bar, two drunks were having an increasingly hostile exchange. Segerus felt, but couldn’t be sure, that he could actually hear the candle on the table sputtering and hissing as it reached the end of its short, tallowy life. Then came a more distinct series of sounds: the clack of one of the Aazaard’s cheap ceramic swill-mugs on the oakwood bar, some softly uttered syllables that may have been something like Nondedju, I’ll wipe you off my fist, and finally the softer but still distinctive sound of the spot between cheek and jaw being struck.
In the chaos that followed, Segerus threw back the last few drops of his drink, and walked through the brawl and out the door into the cold night air, heading for Marie Pelletier’s.
#
After the first step, the spider’s forward motion strangely stalled, though the camera still moved rhythmically with its small footsteps. Jaromír figured it was stuck on a metal lip of some sort, or just unable to get traction, and began moving the control back and forth. Suddenly he realized what he was seeing: the vertical part of one of the steps. He had flipped his walker, and there was no clear way to un-flip it. He sighed and activated the distress siren. It didn’t have audio, but seemed to be accompanied by a faint red glow that flashed every few seconds. After several minutes, something seemed to flicker onscreen. Then the camera refocused and he was moving forward. He was on the path! All he needed to do was get the thing to a designated check-in spot and sign off.
All of a sudden a white, whiskered face with massive black eyes appeared onscreen, making him practically leap out of his chair. Nomdidiu, a fucking cat! That must have been what had knocked his walker off the steps. He moved away from it as quickly as possible, coming to what appeared to be another construction site. Moving along the base of the fence, he found a spot where it crossed over a particularly deep hollow. He guided the walker forward, and after one last jarring swat from an unseen paw, crossed under the fence and into the darker area beyond.
He opened the menu and was about to start the shutdown/checkout process when another huge jolt rocked the camera. The damned cat! He pushed forward towards a hole at the foot of the Vleeshuis wall, but just as he was about to reach it a huge swat from an unseen paw sent the camera spinning into further darkness.
That was it. He’d somehow have to explain to the rental company that their device was inside a hole inside a fenced-off construction site, and if they didn’t like it, they could keep his deposit. He brought up the menu, tapped down a few options to “check out”. The confirmation message popped up on the screen, warning him he was in a high-tariff checkout zone. He was about to hit “Enter” again when a gleam at the corner of the screen caught his eye.
#
Segerus threw back the last half-sip of his bitter drink, and prepared to do what he did best: chart a path through the revelers, brawlers, or sodden inebriates and back out into the quiet night once again, where he could perhaps hope to transfer, via osmosis, a quantum of his wormwood-tinged drunkenness to the cold night air. Just before he was about to rise, though, he caught the scent of rosewater and heard her distinctive cigarette-smoke voice: “He is the thirsty one, non?” He turned his head and there she was: Joséphine, smiling, backlit by lantern-light.
She led him out of the bar, back through the dark lobby of velvet and candlelight and up the worn wooden staircase. He followed, his eyes moving slowly upward from her slippered feet to her ample backside to the crisscrossed lacing that stopped in a bow just below her shoulder blades. She led him past their usual room and down the dim carpeted hallway. She stopped at a low, nondescript door at the far end of the hall. In the brief moment the door was opened, he could see that the room was in fact a closet, with shelves on both sides holding rags, linens, and pails.
She pulled the door closed behind him, and the closet was plunged into darkness. He felt her lips press against his in a kiss, which she broke off too quickly. Apparently this was to be a business meeting.
#
He canceled the confirmation, peering at the screen to see if it would reappear. After a few seconds, he saw it again. As he peered into the darkness of the screen, the small flicker came and went, glinting ever so faintly in the miniscule movements of the tiny headlamp. He decided to try the distress siren once more, in the hopes that its faint red light might improve his visibility somewhat. The red glow flashed on, and he jumped back from the screen. It went dark again, but he could still see the image in his mind. The red light flashed on again. He blinked, and pulled his face closer to the screen.
He recalled, as a child, seeing images of mummified bodies in Mexico or someplace, that had simply desiccated and withered over the centuries. They were undeniably human, but also looked somehow fake, as if made out of papier maché. The image he was seeing onscreen was the same: taut skin, oversized but mercifully closed eyes, lipless mouth, open wide as if drawing a last breath, skin drawn back to expose the teeth.
#
Joséphine’s voice in the darkness, no longer singsong and lilting: “Our friend, you know? He come back again a few hour ago, drunk like alway, so me and Adélaïde, we pretend to make nice. When we get to room, we already carry him. Like the sack full of rocks! His drink is mix by Adélaïde with the poeder you give to me.”
Severus sensed the story trundling slowly but steadily towards something dark and unspeakable. The “friend” was Joris Van Vliet, brother of Tymen, Hammer of Antwerp. Joris was mostly known as a violent, drunken libertine, but he was essential to the family business as a smuggler, particularly of precious stones. Among the girls of Marie Pelletier’s, he was a threat to be contained. And the opium powder: it had been a favor to Joséphine several weeks before, though he realized now that his warning of “ten percent, no more” may not have been as clearly communicated as he’d hoped.
Joséphine continued: “We put him on the bed. He look bad, with blue in his face. Adélaïde touch him and scream.”
He sighed deeply, exhaling notes of jenever and absinthe into the already complex bouquet of the room. He let his mind drift back to his workplace, near the Groot Vleeshuis, and a conversation with the cart driver several days prior: these from Gravensteen today, fresh convicts, six bodies, seven heads. Just what they gave me. Strange math we get sometimes, but I’m sure you’ll get ’em all in the ground somehow.
Segerus Maes, apprentice undertaker in an unlit closet, began to do some math of his own. His mind was circling the understanding, without explicitly thinking it, that a head would be easier to dispose of than a whole body. The old man ran a flawless operation, and was sure to inspect the coffins closely before they went in the ground. Perhaps he would go for a walk near the Leie, where it was nice and dark and devoid of passersby, unless you counted all the stray cats.
#
With each flash of red, he could see something glinting at the base of a tooth, visible through the tattered parchment in which it had once been wrapped.
His unease grew. He was a sky-dweller now, and though it was irrational, he felt the ground would somehow have more gravity, or its air would be toxic to breathe. In a more practical sense, leaving his station would put him in severe breach of contract.
How long had it been since he’d been groundside? Ten months? Twelve months? The red light blinked on and off, the thing at the root of the tooth glinted. It was probably nothing. Some sort of dental implant. He’d have to talk to people, take cabs. He’d have to get over or under the fence. It was probably nothing.
#
The Obstbrand was giving Joris a pleasantly warm feeling. As he swilled the last sip around his mouth, he pushed against his false tooth with the tip of his tongue, more out of habit than necessity. It had held the De Blijn Sapphire for two days of intense questioning; it could certainly hold six medium-carat diamonds for one night.
#
Jaromír took a deep breath and pressed the two red buttons that bypassed the standard descent controls. The elevator shuddered into motion, and the sudden descent gave his stomach a queasy weightlessness. He closed his eyes and prepared for the yet faster second stage of the descent, which would begin after a few more seconds, delivering him groundside in a matter of minutes.
He fingered the cash in his pocket, as well as the map he’d printed out. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used paper money, and couldn’t even be sure it was still universally accepted groundside. As for the printed-out map, something he remembered his grandparents doing when he was very young, he’d left his minitab on the 247th floor in case his employer randomly decided to ping it, and was thus on his own for navigation.
He began to mentally prepare himself for the thicker air of the street, which in his memories was heavy with moisture and layered with scents: fried food, urine, the deep gear-oil reek of the subway churned up by passing trains. There would be drunks looking to get drunker, looking for a good time or a bad time, unsure what they were looking for. It was, after all, Saturday night.
#
Joris stared and blinked at the twin flames of a lantern on the wall behind the bar, willing them back into one, but they refused to budge. He rubbed his eyes for several seconds, but they refused to focus. Two women helped him to his feet and led him through the bar; he saw himself passing through clouds of smoke and towards the stairs, but couldn’t feel his legs.
He’d get to them all, the ungrateful cattle, once he’d slept off this damn headache.
#
Jaromír made a mental note to pick up something that could pass for cat treats on his way to the Groot Vleeshuis. If the cat was still lurking there, perhaps he could win it over to the point it would follow him back to the tower. Another presence on the floor would do him good.
Then the elevator began its second phase, and his thoughts were pulled into a single ball of jittery energy at the top of his skull. He braced himself against the metal wall as he hurtled earthward, towards a new goal, a new rock waiting to be turned over.
John K. Peck is a Berlin-based writer and musician. His fiction has appeared in Interzone, Pyre, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Twin Pies, Cold Signal, Dark Horses, Glasgow Review of Books, and various anthologies. His novelette “Evergreen” was published in 2025 as part of the Split Scream series from Tenebrous Press. Read more at johnkpeck.com.