Mother of the Spiders: Octagon

5. Willy (Thread One)

[Each chapter of Octagon corresponds to a song that inspired the shape of the character arc and/or story arc. You can listen to each chapter's "song" to gain further insight into the world-building of Gossamer Loom and the people who live there. I definitely had fun listening to these songs while I was writing the novel. Chapter 5's "Formation Song" is "When You Were Young" by The Killers.]

"Willy..."

William Ashbury III, known by his friends, family, and certain ghosts as "Willy," sat alone in the corner booth of Pam's Diner. Outside, the town of Gossamer Loom was still with an early morning fog. The mist clung to the windows, blurring the world beyond into smudged shadows and faint, ghostly outlines.

Willy's fingers were wrapped tightly around a mug of coffee he hadn't touched. The dark liquid inside had long gone cold, but he couldn't bring himself to care. His focus was elsewhere, trapped in the unsettling silence of his thoughts.

"Willy..."

He could still hear the voice, raspy and distant, like wheezing winds through decaying autumn leaves. It was his grandfather's voice. It was the same voice that had plagued him as a child.

William Ashbury I...

His namesake. His father's namesake. Even before the man had died, his raspy voice had haunted him. His grandfather wasn't cruel with his words, but the sound was nonetheless a fright. And when the man had died, and the voice had started to make its way into Willy's nightmares... that was when it had really started to get to him. It had taunted him, terrorized him, driven him to wake in a cold sweat, heart hammering in his chest. It had whispered to him from the shadows, calling him, always calling him back to the mausoleum.

Willy squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the memory, but it was no use. The image of the Ashbury Mausoleum rose in his mind, unbidden, the air around it thick with rot.

There... his grandfather's corpse lay waiting for him, pulling him closer like it had him tethered to a string.

The dream always began the same way. Willy was standing in the graveyard, the fog so thick he could hardly even see more than a few feet out.

In the distance, just beyond the rows of crooked headstones, he could see the dark silhouette of the mausoleum, a hulking shape against the pale sky. His heart would start to pound as the mausoleum drew nearer, though his feet never seemed to move.

In the nightmare, he was pulled toward the mausoleum then, as if some invisible force had him by the throat.

He could hear the whisper, the rasp of his grandfather's voice, growing louder with every step he took.

"Willy..."

It wasn't a call or a beckon. It wasn't a command. It was the murmur of an old relative, brimming with desperate longing and aching with loneliness.

When he reached the door to the mausoleum, his hand would rise of its own accord, pushing the heavy iron door open. The sound of the hinges screeching in the silence made his skin crawl. Inside, the stone walls were always covered in a damp fluid, the smell of death and decay so thick it made him heave and choke. But it wasn't just the smell. It was the presence, the way the shadows seemed to move, to breathe, as though the mausoleum itself were alive.

And in the center, his grandfather waited, lying in the stone sarcophagus with the stone lid having already been removed. His grandfather's body was twisted and rotting but somehow... it was still alive. Its eyes were always open, staring up at the ceiling, but they would shift when Willy entered, locking onto him with a look that sent ice through his veins.