Apex Book Company

The spider and I have a pact.

She lives in my garden shed, spinning her silk and weaving her wickedness. I hear her banging against the tin sometimes when I venture out into the yard. It would be a huge web by now, no doubt cluttering that claustrophobic space. Back when we first made our introductions, her web was a puny thing, a few threads thrown together in a corner.

I’ve always suspected she was lazy. First impressions count for everything. She was too idle to leave her birthplace. Too lazy to put up a decent web to catch her meals. Relied on brutality too much. Appetite for killing and all that. It was in her nature to stay put, to force me out of my own shed.

It was always so hot in that shed, a hothouse for unripe things. Worse now, I’d imagine. I used it all the time, especially since I retired, storing my barrow, some chemicals, and all my garden tools. Even had one of Deirdre’s dried herb bouquets in there, hanging upside down on the wall and musking up the place. I complained at the time, bitterly in fact, but it did cover the unwholesome smells.

I can’t remember exactly when the spider took up residence. It was years ago now. One summer.

She was just a tiny garden spider back then. No doubt spawned from some bulbous sack wedged into a crag, erupting with a thousand of her arachnid kin. Hairy, disgusting things, all fangs and legs. I think even then, shortly after her birthing, she would have devoured her sisters in a massacre too small for the rest of Nature to notice, or care.

No, she’d tolerate no competition.

How do I know it’s a she? There are things you just know. You feel it in your bones. The spider is female. The eyes gave it away for me, the coldness. Men can’t muster that kind of cold.

I know she will kill me.

She knows it too.

She gave me such a fright when I first saw her. I hate spiders with a passion. The sight of them freezes my gut. Damned things can drop into your mouth when you’re sleeping, or crawl into your ears, or they lurk under the toilet seat, waiting to sink their fangs into your arse. I hate the way they move; their stiletto crawl. I hate their legs and their bristly feel. They’re Nature’s sick joke, just looking for a chance to mess with your life.

I tried ignoring her at first, but every time I reached for the pruning shears, she dangled like an acrobat, lowering herself toward my outstretched arm. She toyed with me. Forced me to snatch my hand back every time. I hated that feeling of powerlessness.

In those early days, when her web only spanned the corner, I used a long branch to knock it down. The bug spray’s range was too limited; I couldn’t bear holding my hand so close, even for a few seconds. Other spiders would have scurried away and sought refuge in some shadowy cleft in the roof when I attacked. But no, not her.

When I ripped her web apart, she’d leap at me without fear, landing perilously close to my shoulder or sleeve. I know my heart would have given up if she’d succeeded. I’d jump back, sometimes banging my head on the low door frame. The sharp tin always claimed its toll, often the soft part of my scalp. I couldn’t stand being in the shed when I couldn’t track her, so I kept the door closed and left her to whatever wall she clung to.

Once, when she landed particularly close, I tumbled out the door, landing awkwardly on my back. The pain was terrible, splinters and razors jagging on my spine, and laid me up for weeks. After I recovered from the fall, I stopped trying to destroy her web.

#####

I kept away from the shed for a long time after that. Deirdre assumed I’d grown lazy with age when I stopped tending the garden and doing chores in the back yard. Her nagging was constant and increased with her disrespect. I’d once held patents, won research awards, and gained degrees in chemistry and the sciences. Colleagues respected me, even feared me, but still valued the insight I had. Deirdre however couldn’t coast on memories. Respect had to be earned every day afresh with her. She’d often compare me unfavourably with our neighbour, old Jack Burkins. I couldn’t tell her the truth. There were too many things I had to keep hidden from her.

Jack had a dozen years on me and was still as spritely as a man half his age–gardening, making repairs, building a fort in his yard for his grandsons. He worked hard, but made up for it by being a braggart. And a pervert. Deirdre couldn’t see it; she was blinded by Jack’s energy and affability. I always hoped his grandsons would stop visiting. But they didn’t.

#####

I see things in the eyes. It’s nothing special, no psychic power, just a knack for noticing the little things. A way of knowing. Jack’s grandsons are like open books–I see their hunted looks when I watch them play in Jack’s fort. Like they’re preparing mental defences. The worst part is seeing their eyes go vacant when Jack checks on them, like their hope is sucked away. Their defences collapse as surely and suddenly as a house of cards. That tears my heart.

I’ve seen just as deep into my nemesis. The nature of things is in the eye, and that bitch has eight of them. The truth is there, plain for anyone to see if you look hard enough.

Truth be told, no one could really see the fear in mine. I had ways of hiding it. Spending your years the way I did, you learn to hide weakness, mercy, and truth, until only the lie remains.

#####

It was during this time–when I kept a wary watch on both Jack and the shed–Deirdre started into the garden. She never let me hear the end of it. At first it was pulling the weeds in the garden bed beneath the window sill. She kept her gloves in the laundry and had no need to enter the shed; I made do without. I helped with the weeds, which brought a reprieve from her disappointment. Along the kitchen wall we went, then the side of the house, clearing those weeds. All the time she kept talking of pruning the roses, begging me to make a start on them by the weekend. More excuses followed. And more frowns.

So it was that I returned from buying the Saturday paper to find the house empty. The weeding had been done. The ironed clothes laid pristinely across the bed. The iron was still warm; Deirdre didn’t know how to waste time.

I grew worried when she didn’t answer my call. She never left the house without leaving a note. She was considerate like that. Forty years of marriage and her only fault was restlessness. She always had something in her hand. If it wasn’t a scrubbing brush or pile of sheets, it was knitting needles or a crossword puzzle.

Damn her for it. If only I’d told her my fears.

It was inevitable that I’d have to go out to the shed. I’d already checked with Myrtle across the road, even stomached a terse conversation with Burkins. None of them had seen her leave. I wandered the house a dozen times more before mustering the courage to look out in that shed.

The pruning shears were the first thing to tumble from the shed when I opened the door. Deirdre was the second. She was half-cocooned in coarse webs by a spider incapable of finishing a job properly. A network of threads trailed from her cocoon and vanished inside the doorway. I tried screaming but a sob broke out instead. I kneeled by Deirdre’s body, cradling her head. My hands became entangled in the morass of her hair and the sticky threads. Parting the web shroud from her face, I tried screaming once more, but it was a hoarse, pathetic thing–a mirror of the scream locked on Deirdre’s face.

As I held my wife, something dragged her from my grasp, inch by inch back into the shed. I grabbed her hair, trying to haul her back in a grisly tug-of-war. I was winning. The tug slackened and I clawed her back to daylight, until my tear-stung vision cleared and I saw the spider approach.

She emerged from some dark place within the shed, reaching out a solitary foreleg and stepping down on Deirdre’s foot. The spider’s leg was all black bristles–a limb larger than my arm. My tears dried up, my stomach knotted, as the fear took hold and paralysed me. The bitch savoured her time, easing out into the light only after prodding around with her foreleg. She reeked of death and decomposition.

Stalking in silence over Deirdre’s legs toward me, she allowed me the chance to see her. Really see. She wanted me to know my murderer, the one who would leisurely suck me dry as I hung upside down in the lightless confines my own shed.

Her body was the size of a dog’s by then, her span easily that of a man. Or woman, as I discovered. She eased along Deirdre’s carcass, halting above her torso to stare me in the face.

The gush of hot fluid streaming down my leg was my only warmth–with the paralysis came the freeze. My limbs were numb. A thumping heart and stinging eyes the only gauges I still lived.

At such awful proximity, I saw my reflection fractured across her eyes. I was dimly aware of brown bands, bordering on red, criss-crossing her bulging abdomen and spilling onto her legs. The stripes pulsed scarlet. I was never sure if this was my eyes tricked by terror, or the grief-stained memories of an old man.

The spider’s palps waved to me, inviting me to cast myself onto her glistening fangs. A clinical fascination for the poison–dull beneath my fear and heartache–was the only thing that kept me from death. Still kneeling, still cradling Deirdre, I was unable to move.

Our pact was forged in that moment. Her shatterglass eyes knew my secrets, and I knew hers.

The terms were agreed, under duress, and the pact sealed at a price–Deirdre–as she was slowly dragged from my arms. I was incapable of stopping the spider. Powerless, I sobbed as Deirdre was dragged away.

I knelt in the dirt, terrified and struggling to understand what had just happened. It was only when I noticed movement inside the shed–hints of spiny joints peeking out from the shadows, weaving ill over Deirdre’s corpse–that I found the courage to lock the shed door and stumble to the house.

But that never stopped the spider. She’d never let anything as simple as a bolted door stand in her way. Evil always finds a way to do harm. Containing it–her–was folly, a false hope.

At first I sought revenge. I stuffed Cockroach bombs– recently bought but ones I’d never found the time to use–through the slats of the shed window, and watched as the vapour escaped from every unsealed joint. With my knowledge and experience, I should have known better, but the grief was blinding, the bombs close at hand. I left it for a night, still harbouring the hope of rescuing Deirdre’s body from the spider’s clutches.

I barely slept that first night. Nightmares and memories weaved through my mind. I locked myself in the bedroom, a steel-tipped umbrella within reach. It was the best weapon I could find; the axe was in the shed. It was useless of course–arthritis had already stolen my strength.

I’d reneged on the pact within twenty four hours, and she reminded me very quickly that a price was always paid. When I patrolled the house at dawn I discovered the desiccated husk of a cat straddling the welcome mat. It was covered with sticky strands. A clear warning.

I’ve lived under her shadow ever since.

Understanding the terms of the pact was difficult at first. I knew in my heart what was required, but refused to face up to it until she forced my hand.

She caught me by surprise that very first time. It was dusk, and I was staring out the kitchen window at the setting sun, thinking of Deirdre–how to liberate her body, what to tell the authorities without sounding insane or senile. I’d decided to handle this on my own. No one would believe an excitable old man.

Besides, there was more to it. Penance. I couldn’t explain it properly, not then. But I knew she was here to punish me for the past.

The spider was under the pergola, clinging to the rafters. I was absorbed in memory, and didn’t notice her until she began her deliberate passage along the underside of the pergola. The horror of watching her move those eight monstrous legs–nightmarish pistons of sinew–was debilitating. The spell broke when I backed into the corner of the stove and pain lanced my hip.

Without looking back, I scrambled to the bedroom and locked the door, gripping the umbrella with sweaty palms. I stood at the foot of the bed, swivelling from door to window and back again, waiting for her to claim me. It was only then, long minutes after she hadn’t attacked, that I noticed I’d soiled myself again. I hated the bitch.

I cleaned myself up and gathered the courage to patrol the house once more. Much to my relief, I found no sign of her–but I understood the intent of her visit.

That’s when I snuck over to Myrtle’s place. She usually napped after watching the evening news, and Max, her companion, was a trusting dog. He’d known me for years, so coaxing him over to my yard with a treat wasn’t a problem. Finding the resolve to get close to the shed was.

I had a spare dog lead from when Deirdre’s poodle passed away. Trixie was a loyal dog, but too high-strung for my taste. It took Deirdre many years to overcome the loss, and we’d decided not to get another pet. I wasn’t much of an animal person anyway.

Using the lead, I tied Max to the water tap just a few metres from the shed. He looked up at me, panting in that slobbery, contented way Boxers do. His flat brown eyes asked the question, which I answered by turning away. I closed my eyes against the grim job, swallowed the lump in my throat and walked away. The empty vial in my hand felt as cold as my heart.

I left him the packet of dog chews as a distraction, or perhaps a final meal. I hoped to God that the taste wasn’t too bitter, or the effect too quick or painful.

I couldn’t sleep that night–the dog’s eyes haunted my thoughts. And Deirdre. She was ever present, as if she couldn’t find peace until she was removed from that shed. Sometime near midnight I thought I heard a bark, but the gusting wind drowned out all other nocturnal sounds.

I found nothing the next morning. Absolutely nothing. Neither Max, nor the lead, nor the dog treats; nothing. I was thankful for the absence of blood or telltale signs of a struggle. My traitorous conscience felt I deserved to see some memorial–as if the sight of the shed wasn’t pain enough.

The pact had been consummated.

Hopefully it was ended at the same time.

Weeks passed–torturous weeks where I could do little more than stare out the back window, gauging for signs of life, to see what she was up to. Occasionally I spied Burkins bustling around his yard, or his grandsons playing in the fort. Once I caught sight of him hosing down the naked boys on an especially warm day. They didn’t splash and play like other kids, but stood there like they were enduring a decontaminating shower.

Burkins sometimes returned the favour and spied on me, popping his head over the fence. He never knew how closely I scrutinised his casual glimpses.

Garbage and food scraps piled where I dropped them, drawing vermin. Dishes were left dirty in the sink and across the kitchen benches. The house reeked of filth. I lived from one moment to the next, wearing the same clothes for days at a time. But I stood watchful, ever watchful.

Deirdre’s friends called with regularity, probing for reasons why she wasn’t socialising. I started with excuses but it wasn’t long before I stopped answering the phone altogether. I wrenched the line from the wall when the calls became more insistent. I stopped answering the door. The front curtains were closed so no one could peer inside.

I kept a vigil on the shed and hoped my stare alone would keep the spider at bay. With any luck, she’d be rotting in her own web. It was a solitary duty, but my ghosts and my conscience kept me company.

My hope sputtered, forcing me to act when I sighted her again one evening–crawling out of Burkins’ backyard fort. She had grown in size since the pact was struck.

It was a Friday, and working by routine, Burkins’ grandkids would be playing in that fort the next morning. The spider was telling me something.

Convincing Jack to come around at short notice was easy. A combination of busting a water pipe and Jack’s fondness for holding favours over people did the trick. Gloating bastard. The hardest part was having to shake his hand when I met him at the door.

The ploy worked beautifully, although I had to wait until the spider returned to the shed. I led Burkins around the side gate rather than through the house. He didn’t mind working at night, particularly as the pipe was right under the spotlight I’d repositioned fifteen minutes before.

All I had to do was ask him to retrieve some tools from the shed while I made a phone call. Unlike the turmoil with Max, I watched with apathy as Burkins marched to his death. I was saving his grandsons, and removing a piece of perverted trash at the same time.

It unfolded exactly as I imagined. Jack opened the door and stared into the blackness. There’s precious little light in that corner of the yard, none in the shed. No doubt the compost-and-death stench wafted into his face, distracting him from the task at hand. Barely a heartbeat later, I saw him flung to the ground. Amorphous blackness, pulsing red, crowded over him.

I was spared the worst of it. The darkness was too dense to properly distinguish the spider’s form, the shriek too short to add to the horrors in my memory.

I popped around to tell Margaret, Jack’s wife, that he’d be home in a few hours. It was hard to hold her eye, damned hard. Monsters, like Jack and my spider, had ways of attaching themselves to people’s lives. When excised, as they surely must, their absence was strangely painful. Margaret would be lost, but deep down she’d find relief. One day. Maybe her grandsons would too.

Pretending urgency for the repairs, I dodged her questions about Deirdre and hurried back home. The cover story was already prepared–Burkins left for home around eleven thirty, couldn’t quite conquer the repair job. Hadn’t seen him since. With the water valve shut off to the damaged pipe and the vague assurance of a plumber coming to fix it in a week or two, I settled back into my vigil.

Four days after Jack’s death, detectives from missing persons division, not homicide, dropped by. I remained oddly calm while fielding their questions, as few as they were. Even when they took a look at the pipe Jack worked on.

One of them edged toward the shed, wondering at an unexpected rattle of tin. Part of me wanted them to see, hoping they’d somehow kill her before she claimed them. Somehow enabling me to liberate Deirdre’s body. But my fear of the spider’s release crushed my harboured hope. She was an evil beyond containment. I couldn’t have more victims on my hands.

I assured the detectives of rats and sun-strained metal, anything to keep them away. The excuses worked as I hoped they would. Their eyes spoke of indifference.

I thought I was safe for a while after that, but the bitch had other ideas. She popped up again only a fortnight later. Probably enjoyed the perversion in Burkins’ veins and wanted me to provide her with more.

I sat for breakfast at the dining table, a large glass circle supported by pillars of wrought iron and wicker. Just one example of Deirdre’s fine taste. As I tossed cereal dregs into my mouth from a stained bowl, I noticed odd lumps at the edges of the glass jutting from beneath the tablecloth. I lifted my bowl and tugged the cloth away to find the spider clinging to the table’s underside. Leering in the way only spiders can, rubbing her palps at the glass.

The bowl smashed on the tiles. I could barely breathe. She was so close, staring at me with her gloating colony eyes. I’d swear she stole that trait from Burkins, because she didn’t follow me when I found the strength to run. She just hung there, upside down. Gloating. Again, I shut myself in the bedroom and huddled under the dubious protection of the umbrella.

#####

I’ve left the bedroom twice since then. That was yesterday. It took me hours to find the fortitude to leave the room. But in those hours, while staring at a tiny jumping spider on the wall, I drew a plan together. A way to make peace with myself and end this damned pact.

While cautiously checking the house that evening, I spied her outside, clambering along the back fence. She was restless, her scarlet stripes practically glowing in the moonlight. The prey she’d expected me to provide wasn’t there. I knew she’d be agitated. I’d earlier read her desperation, even through my fear–when she studied me from beneath the table. Her desperation was there, just below the gloating and arrogance. I saw the reason why–in her eyes and in her bulbous abdomen.

With my options narrowed through my own desperation, I claimed what I needed on my second outing and then returned to the bedroom, locking the door behind me.

#####

She’s easing down the glass now, feeling her way along the sliding door for a way to get at me. The glass squeals as she scrapes along its surface. It’s a distant sound, like a fading scream.

It’s been a night since I disappointed her, and she’s ravenous. The desperation sparkles in her eyes. I can see that clear enough. It gives me a sense of purpose, of righteousness.

The pact has ended. I am her slave no more.

It’s hard to concentrate with the shakes and blurred vision, but my fear is gone. Thank God, my fear is gone.

I’ve left the glass door unlocked. She’ll get in soon enough.

I don’t know how she became pregnant; maybe she’s multiplying with my crimes. Doesn’t matter now. Her ruthlessness and laziness are her undoing. I am an easy target. I am the one she wants to kill.

I dip my hand into the bag and withdraw the last hastily baked cookie, this one laced with a sedative to deaden me before the end. I don’t want to feel anything when she finally forces her way inside. The thought bothered me before I started eating the cookies, but everything feels so disconnected now. I knew the expected results, the theories, but the sensations–I had no idea.

She’ll probably suck me dry before dawn. That might matter to her, but it won’t make much difference to me. I’ll be dead either way.

I’ve learned from the mistake I made with Myrtle’s dog. Upped the dosage and mixed the poisons. With the cocktail floating around in my bloodstream, once she gets even a small taste she’ll curl up and die within the hour.

A lifetime’s knowledge of poisons to choose from, in all shapes and sizes–my advantage from a career as a military toxicologist. Targeted poisons kill one species while barely affecting another, but they were never my specialty. I could only make up an approximation with my limited supplies to put in these cookies. Lethal for both us, quicker for her.

Hopefully she won’t make it back to the shed. Make it easy for the neighbours to spot her curled and shrivelled up in the yard, and to recover Deirdre’s bones.

This monster is my sins revisited, I know that now. My nemesis and I, poison makers alike. There’s an absurd circularity about the whole thing. Both monsters in our own way, destined to cancel each other out.

I’m so sorry Deirdre. Sorry for my lies and my hidden shames. Sorry to the men and women I’ve murdered through my work.

My scribbled dossier about the spider, and my past, is stored in a place others will find it–when the smell, or the dead spider, draws attention. I hope to God someone will forgive me.

Through blurry eyes, I watch her clawing at the door. Her frustration is plain to me–the swirl beneath the rage. Spiders would be abysmal at poker.

Her eight eyes see me but can’t read my fuzziness. Can’t see her death sitting before her.

Come and get me.

Bitch.

First published in Borderlands #7

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Shane Jiraiya Cummings short story “The Cutting Room” appears in the Apex Publications anthology Gratia Placenti. Get your copy today.