The Spider
A ghost has started appearing in my house. Where she came from, or when, or how, is a mystery to me, since, for as long as I've lived here I have never seen, nor felt anything supernatural or odd. Yet all of a sudden there she is, and with her the uneasy feeling that this old place is no longer my own. She invades it, she adopts it, she fills it with the alien, haunted air of the Other Side. My home has become infected with death.
The first time I saw her, I had wandered through from the kitchen, bored, at night. The TV was suddenly blaring out the 10 O'clock news. I had left it off, I was sure. Then she was there, looking up at me through bleary eyes in that dreamlike state she's often in. Although there was, as always, a certain translucency to her, I was certain for a moment that she was an intruder of the living world - a squatter, or would-be thief on too many drugs to do the job. The upturned eyes began to clarify, to focus, to widen as we gazed, stalemate, upon each other. Her mouth began to gape open. Then came the proof that my petrified mind needed of her supernaturality - that scream. A dreadful, piercing Banshee wail from the coldest depths of Hell. I turned and ran. Don't ask me where.
The next evening, I could still feel her about - the odd scuffle in the kitchen, the occasional footstep in the bedroom, the permanent feel of not being alone. I tensely moved about my home, hoping, but not believing, that it was all just a figment of my imagination. And then there she was again, sitting at my place on the dinner table, breathing her death over my food, as though she were about to somehow eat it. She looked up and saw me, standing frozen at the door. Her face, I'm sure, matched mine - a look combining impotent fury, wonder and pathetic fear mirrored my feelings exactly. I stood there, rooted, watching her watching me watching her for I don't know how long, until all of a sudden she was standing, still enraged and terrified, and a glass was hurtling towards me. She missed, and after a soprano smash, streams of red wine began their long and messy voyages from halfway up the wall behind me to the carpet. She opened her mouth again to screech me into submission, but I was already gone.
Then that other time - no sooner had I turned on the upstairs radio and pottered into the bedroom, but I heard a great gallumphing up the stairs, and the music turned off. I knew immediately that it was her, and had no wish to hear that dreadful cry of hers again, so I waited, silently and still, until I was sure that she had moved on again, then sidled out and switched the radio on again. Again the gallumphing, again the silence. Again I waited. This was a silly game, but I was determined to win it. I switched the radio on again, and this time tuned it to a different channel, to confuse her. I hid and waited again, as she threw herself up the stairs for the third time and with a cry of rage, propelled the radio against the wall, smashing it. Then there was weeping. Then she was gone again.
This time it was a short haunting, and strangely not unpleasant. I wandered into the bathroom to see her lying in the bath, naked, her eyes closed and her head submerged. She didn't see me, and I walked straight out again. Could she be trying to communicate with me? Is there something she needs me to do? Something she needs to know? Something she needs me to know? The bath must be a clue - whoever heard of a ghost taking a bath - perhaps she drowned, had a seizure whilst bathing, was held under by an abusive or jealous lover, even cut her wrists in the bathtub. She certainly was a pretty thing. When she was alive, that is.
They say to arachnophobes that spiders are more afraid of people than we are of them. This is supposed to make the arachnophobe feel better. However, this is becoming the case with my little spider, as I am becoming used to her comings and goings, her meddlings, her uneasy atmosphere, and she still finds it impossible to get used to me. This does not make me feel any better, because I find myself having to gingerly tiptoe my way around my delicate intruder so as to not upset the little ghoul. Me! The rightful owner of this house, the inheritor of the living world having to placate a ghost! As soon as she sets eyes on me that awful Banshee wail starts up again, and only my swift departure seems to abate it. Once, late at night, it angered me so much that I started to throw things at her - books, cutlery, anything that came to hand. The wail increased, and then softened to a sob. I could just make out some kind of prayer being muttered from under the whimpering and cowered arms. I couldn't understand it. I think it was Hebrew. So. A little, frightened, Jewish spook. Poor little spider. What violence has she endured in life to make her so timid in death? Do I terrify her because I'm a man? Has a man done this to her? I must find out more. I must try to communicate with her some day.
I found her in my bed tonight. She was sleeping. So pretty, so limpid and translucent. I couldn't help myself. I stroked her cheek. There was something strange, cold, electrical about the contact between us. Like that weird, automatic shudder you sometimes feel and you think to yourself "someone just walked over my grave". The conjoining of the living and the dead. Her eyes flicked open and the wails began again, but I tried to bear them. "I want to help you" I told her, bringing my mouth close, so she could hear over her own screams, and holding her flailing arms. "What are you afraid of? I can help you." I paused, then it came out of my mouth the moment it came into my head. "I love you." And it was true. I stopped for a second, thinking about what I had said. She flew, naked, out of the bed, out of the room and was gone.
She is gone. For good. I can't feel her anymore. A spider absails down from
light bulb to floorboards. Floorboards? There was a carpet in this room before.
And a paper lantern over the bulb. And why isn't the light on? It's dark
in here. I look around. There is nothing. No chairs, no table, no telly,
no radio. They have all left with her. I start. The windows are boarded up.
The spider starts wandering towards me across the bare, dusty (why is it
so dusty in here?) floor. I stand completely still and begin to think about
the apparitions. Why had I never left the house, no matter how scared I had
been? Why hadn't I sought help, shared my grievances with friends or family?
Who did I know but her? I recall the electricity in her skin, the weeping,
the screaming, the frozen fear and horror on her face. The way she thought
she owned everything. The rivers of blood red wine trickling behind my back.
The plates and knives flying at her cowered figure, and "whoever heard
of a ghost taking a bath". Spiralling into despair, I search frantically
for something - anything - in my mind apart from her and the inside of this
damned house. A name? A face? My mother - my last lover - my own? My mind
is a blank. The spider wanders about a centimetre into where I should be
standing then turns, spooked, and scuttles at speed into a crack in the wall.