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Caleb surveyed the rain-soaked roadway that twisted off into darkness at the top of the hill. Perfect. His followers demanded creepy, particularly for Hallowe’en, so he’d give them something special. Below him, he heard a doorbell ring, anticipatory hushed giggles, and then the familiar chorus:

“Trick or treat!”

He flicked his phone screen to video and took a long, panoramic shot. Setting the scene. Reassure the viewers, before you plunge them somewhere they’d never go alone. That was what people subscribed to his channel for – chills they could enjoy in the safety of their bedrooms. He had thousands of followers already. By the time he graduated he planned to make a living from his videos, traveling across the country chasing ghost stories, rumours of monsters.

He killed the shot and walked up the hill, the streetlights an endangered species thinning as he climbed. The road dwindled into rough chippings, then muddied dirt, before darkness swallowed it. There was only one house here, and it didn’t give out candy.

He took a few seconds footage of his sneakers scrunching on pebbled soil before sweeping the phone upward to the trees menacing the street on either side, the brooding woodland cresting the hill above.

“Hallowe’en,” he intoned, “with night falling. My destination: a haunted house so terrifying no kid will go near it. Nobody will. Except me.”

His breath was coming roughly now, there was just enough light to make out little white wisps of it in the October air. To his left was a shaggy hedge, its ragged middle festooned with yellow tape. DANGER. DO NOT CROSS. The same kind of tape a lot of the houses down the hill had, only here no plastic skeletons hung from trees, no pumpkins grinned. He took a slow, lingering shot. Then he pushed open the gate.

Long grass stretched wet over the moss-grown path to the front door. Trees laced their gnarled fingers together overhead, weaving shadows so deep he had to pull a torch from his pocket with his free hand. He sucked in a breath and tapped the white circle on his phone screen.

Recording.

The bushes on either side of the path were draped with cobwebs, glinting silver and delicate in the sudden illumination, so that when the breeze blew they fluttered like the wings of a gleaming bug. He stretched out a finger to touch a strand, gasping in a rich alloy of joy and disgust as it stuck to his skin, leaving a hole in the intricate netting. The wind blew again, flittering leaves like stifled laughter. He rubbed his finger clean and walked on, swinging his phone to capture the meshes of gossamer flanking the path.

Up next to the house the shadows were so deep his light got lost in them, night nibbling at its edges like a great hungry insect. Still recording, he placed the sole of his shoe gingerly on the rot-darkened boards. They held. He took a step, and the old planks screeched in pain. He paused. No footsteps from inside the house. No lights flashed on. Nothing.

Time for a little dramatic acting to ratchet up the tension.

“Here we are, on the threshold. I’m going to be honest, I’m a little nervous. What’s waiting for me, inside this door?”

Feeling a tickle, he looked down to find a tiny spider hanging from his arm. Forcing his hand steady, he got a good shot of the ghostly pale arachnid, transferring it to a windowsill where the frame was mouldered, the panes thick with grime. The little creature scuttled away, its translucent body taking on the grey of the sill. In the corner was another web, and stretched across the top of the pane, another, A different, miniscule, white spider sat at its centre, like a mote of dust in his torch beam. He zoomed in until it looked monstrous, its legs shifting and blurring.

“Bugs are the least of my worries. Whatever’s waiting for me in there, it’s going to be a lot scarier than this little guy.”

Checking his battery, he swept his phone camera across a door furred grey with dust. Experimentally, he twisted the doorknob, pushed. With a squeal like splitting wood, it swung open on a hallway so thick with gossamer it seemed to be one great web, hollow at its centre. The sticky veil draped over chairs and cupboard doors that sagged on their hinges like loosened teeth.

He whistled softly, partly for effect, partly to steady his nerves. It wasn’t that he was afraid of spiders, he just wasn’t fond of them in his hair. Or on him. Or too close to him. His light wavered back and forth, checking. Things scurried away from the beam. Delicately, he inched his way forward, careful not to touch the clinging mesh on either side.

“We’re moving through the living room and so far, not a monster to be seen. But I can sense something watching me, waiting.”

It wasn’t completely a lie. Caleb could feel the hairs on his neck prickling, tensed for the brush of a spider thread, the tickle of insectile legs. He shuddered involuntarily, then smiled. Excellent vibe.

He’d need another six minutes or so of footage to get this up to length. The rest he could pad with an intro to ramp up the suspense. Got to be something at the heart of it though, to give it structure. Satisfying chills. His torch beam picked out a staircase, the carpet leaking mould in patches up the adjoining wall. Perfect. He’d creep his way upstairs, build the tension, then fake seeing something and run like hell out the door and back down the road. A good camera shake on a dark corner and people would be commenting on what they imagined they’d glimpsed there for weeks.

“Everything’s quiet. It seems deserted. But my instinct tells me I’m not alone. I’m going to take a look upstairs.”

He swung the camera down to film his foot stepping with exaggerated caution on the bottom stair. Waited a heartbeat, two. Stepped again. Somewhere above him things scuttled away from the light. Hopefully, his phone was sensitive enough to pick up the noise. Deliberately he panted, making his breath hitch and come ragged, anxious. His body fell for the trick and he felt his heart begin to race, his chest tighten. Good. All the more effective.

“I’m a little nervous,” he whispered confidentially, switching the camera to his face. The torchlight bleached it of colour, making him look bone-pale, eyes dark pits of unease. He turned the view back to his feet as they shuffled through silted cobwebs and dust.

A few steps up and the phone picked out a large, brown spider skittering away from his sneaker. Lurching against the wall, he flinched back from the enormous web strung there, his screen view flickering across the black, spindle-legged creature at its centre, its globed thorax marked in red. He swished the phone around, following his torch beam, and let out a gasp of genuine dismay.

Spiders. Everywhere. Scuttling away from his feet, swarming over the walls, hanging on threads above him, casting huge, grotesque shadows. His throat clogged with dust, and he held the phone in front of his face, warding off the webs strung across the narrow landing. The door at its end was curtained with them. He hesitated before wrapping his shirt around his fingers to twist the handle.

The long, low bedroom lost itself in shadow. Debris cluttered the floor; glass bottles, takeaway cartons, an old mattress dark and stinking with stains. Thick webbing swathed unidentifiable humps. Beyond the arc of his torch, feet scrabbled through the litter. His phone picked up impossible arachnid bodies large as rats, and he replayed the video torn between horror and glee as he saw how well he’d captured them. This was gold. The skittering continued all around him, as if the darkness leaned in, curious to see.

He filmed again. Rising excitement, mixed with the dust-thickened air, clamped his throat shut, so that he had to swallowed several times before he could call out “hey! Is anyone there?”

The skittering rose to a hiss, then paused in a listening silence where his heart beat loud in his ears. Edging forward, he froze at the sound of creaking.

“Hello?” he called again.

More creaking, as if something tested the weight of the rotting floorboards. He flashed torchlight around the walls, the ceiling. It fell on spider webs thick as carpet, built up over years and years. Deep inside their layers, dark bodies shuffled, cat-sized, dog-sized. The phone screen lingered on them lovingly while his gorge rose; long, spindled legs, furred and jointed; mandibles the size of his hand. Get out, get out now, screamed his brain but he’d come this far. Just a little deeper into the darkness and he could make his dramatic run, salted now with a genuine fear that would have his subscriber numbers doubling, quadrupling even.

Edging forward, his phone in front of him like a shield, he sucked in a dusty breath. In the fluctuating light, a cobweb spanned the width of the room, its threads as broad as his arm, coated with gum so thick he could see it. Something big shuffled right behind him and he flinched forward, almost entangling himself in the sticky trap. The torch beam bobbed and his eyes widened in genuine horror. Ensnared in the fat threads was a body, shriveled like a mummy, its skull mouth agape.

Behind it, something stirred.

With trembling hands, he trained his phone through the colossal web. Four bright glints of light, the size of dinner plates, gleamed back at him. It took a moment to realise they were eyes. His shaking hand traced the screen downward, over sharp, curved fangs, and long segmented legs spiky with fur.

His chest constricting, he began to back slowly away.

There was a hiss behind him and he swung the torch just in time to avoid a thread thick with glue, pulled taut across his path. The hissing rose louder, along with a clicking, screeching sound like knives scraped together.

Around him, twitching bodies closed in on skittering legs, mandibles slashed menacingly, backing him up against that last, enormous web. A thread snagged his torch hand, pinioning it back into the netted snare, another slithered around his ankles, tightening until he would’ve fallen, if the web hadn’t caught him, holding him struggling like an oversized fly. His phone fell from his hand and landed, screen up, one red eye blinking as it took in his terror, recording his screams, until at last he fell silent.

A little while later, its battery gave out.