13 Night Terrors

by D A Roach et al.

  As she was pulling out a spun-glass bowl, she screamed. The bowl fell from her hands back into the box with the sound of breaking glass. She screamed again and shook her hands, and some black things flew off of them, falling on the carpet and scuttling away.

  “Whoa!” Eileen said, jumping back.

  They came crawling out of the box like a pot of rice boiling over. Spiders. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. Their huge, bulbous bodies shone wickedly black, and when Sally screamed and shook another one off her arm, it landed upside down at my feet, showing the bright red hourglass on its belly.

  “Holy shit!” John cried.

  We scrambled for the door, our feet crunching over spiders like grapes. As we pushed outside, I could feel them crawling on me, their little sticky feet creeping up my legs and underneath my shorts.

  We didn’t stop running until we reached the edge of the yard, where we stood making yelpy, squealy noises and shaking out our clothing and hair. Across the street, an old guy glanced in our direction and pulled his fluffy Pomeranian’s leash to get it to walk faster.

  I picked a fat, juicy black widow off my kneecap, and John got one off my butt. “I still feel them crawling on me!” I moaned, pulling up my shirt for the umpteenth time so John could check my back.

  “Naw, you’re good.” His voice was shaking.

  We were all checking each other over one last time and catching our breath when Sally let out a face-shredding scream and clawed at her boob.

  Eileen smacked her hand away and yanked up Sally’s shirt, revealing a pink polka-dotted bra and a gigantic spider clinging to her left breast. Eileen groaned and smacked it away while Sally continued to scream.

  “She’s been bit,” Eileen said.

  A wave of nausea washed over me. “Do you have your keys on you, Eileen?”

  Eileen nodded, sweat dripping down her nose.

  “Take her to the hospital, would you? We’ll follow you.”

  Sally had quit screaming and was sobbing. Her shirt was still hiked up, and a red lump was swelling beneath her clutching fingers. We bundled her into Eileen’s Toyota, and they drove off with a squealing of tires.

  “She’ll be all right,” I said weakly, watching them go. “Black widow bites aren’t that serious…”

  John’s face had gone gray with fury. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” He pounded his fist into one of the sycamores that lined the street.

  A lady two doors down was fetching her mail out of the box, and she paused with her hands on her hips. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that language.”

  John didn’t move, his forehead pressed to the scaly bark of the tree. The lady silently waggled her bitch ass back inside. When she was gone, I turned back to my fiancé.

  His eyes were closed, his face still. I’d never seen him this mad, and I knew there was part of his anger I couldn’t touch or understand and didn’t know if I could help him with. It made me feel helpless.

  And guilty. Hella guilty. It was my own damn family doing this shit to him.

  “Your auntie is right,” I said. “You shouldn’t put yourself in danger like this for me.”

  He cracked his eyes open and squinted at me. “Tara Faith, stop.”

  I shook my head and shrugged, then spun on my heels and headed back toward the house. I’d sent Eileen and Sally to the hospital alone out of selfishness. My brain was going haywire, and I needed relative quiet so I could think. Then I realized my purse with my car keys was inside, so I’d have to reenter spider hell to get them.

  “Where the hell are you going?” John asked as I climbed the steps.

  “Purse.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I mean…uh…”

  I knew he felt like he had to be the man and offer to go in for me, but I wouldn’t embarrass him by turning around and waiting for him to chicken out on that offer.

  I paused in the open doorway, letting my eyes adjust. A few spiders were creeping across the living room floor, but other than that, I didn’t see any. That didn’t make me any easier in my mind, because I knew those buggers were lurking in corners and under the couch. My purse sat on the breakfast bar, all the way across the room. I’d have to circumnavigate the couch, but other than that, my way was clear. I put one foot inside, then another.

  Crunch.

  I yelped and almost tripped and fell flat. Dancing away from what I’d stepped on, I saw it was a big pile of squished carapaces and still-twitching legs that we’d obviously smashed when we’d run outside. I shuddered. Before I could think about it anymore, I dodged over and grabbed my purse.

  I ran back outside and was on the porch when something tickled my hand.

  Your soul is defiled, Tara Faith!

  I screamed and dropped the purse, which was swarming with spiders, pouring out from the front flap and chaining up the straps. I stomped on it, flinging spiders off my arms. Mama’s voice spoke in my head again:

  The evil is inside you, girl. Inside you.

  Black bodies swarmed up my legs, scrabbling over my knees toward the hem of my shorts. I screamed again, stomping and swiping them off me. John ran over and pulled me off the porch as I flailed.

  He smacked at my legs and plucked them off, crunching them under his toes while I stood shivering and sobbing. It seemed forever before he stopped, then turned me this way and that, looking me over.

  “You okay?”

  “They’re still on me!”

  “It’s okay, I got them all. I got them.”

  “Check my hair, goddammit!”

  “I am, I am.”

  He stood holding me and rocking me. It was a while before I realized I was saying, “Fuck off, Mama,” over and over again, but I finally got a hold of myself.

  Fuck off, Mama. You can throw spiders at me and ruin my wedding, but you won’t take my mind, and you won’t take my goddamn husband from me.

  Eventually, John let me go and picked up a fallen branch from the sycamore. He crept back toward the porch, holding it in front of him.

  “You look like you’re gonna joust my purse,” I said shakily.

  “I am.”

  Standing way back at the bottom of the steps, he poked at my bag with the branch. More spiders scampered out, disappearing between the cracks in the wooden boards. He caught the straps of one of the front pockets and dumped it upside down.

  “Shit. Looks like you broke your lipstick in there.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Cellphone looks okay.”

  “Sweet.”

  I hugged my elbows while he painstakingly nudged my wallet, cellphone, and keys down the steps and retrieved them, spider-free. The rest of the crap he left on the porch.

  The last thing he did was hook the front door handle and close it.

  Throwing down the stick, he let out a breath. “Let’s go to the hospital. I’ll call an exterminator on the way and then my grandma, see if we can stay there tonight.”

  I nodded, but as we climbed in the car, I knew in my heart there was nowhere we were safe. Not until these ghosts were gone.

  Some memories are too foul to die, though the people who held them are long gone.

  Chapter Six

  Grandma Knows the Devil When She Sees Him

  Sally was fine, just a little woozy, but not so bad she couldn’t talk to every employee and manager at the company that had sent the centerpieces, demanding not only a refund but ten million in medical bill compensation and emotional distress. That would have been fair if the company had anything at all to do with that arachnid explosion. John had to promise her he’d draft a complaint on behalf of all of us or she would never have let us leave.

  It was after nine p.m. when we finally slouched up the stoop to the little house where John’s grandma lived. We figured she’d be asleep, but as John was retrieving the key from beneath the potted begonia, the door opened.

  “Well, there they are, the lovebirds.” She stepped back, holding the door open for us. “Come on in.”

  “You didn’t have t
o wait up for us, Grandma Diane,” I said.

  “I was up anyway. Was thinking about all this and wanted to talk to y’all. Come sit on the couch.”

  John and I made our way across the creaky floor of the old house and plopped down onto the sofa. I kicked off my shoes and scooted back against the backrest, John’s arm falling over my shoulders. This day had been a million years long. I loved Diane to bits, but whatever she wanted to talk about, I hoped she’d get it over quick.

  Diane went into the kitchen and came back carrying a tray with sandwiches and glasses. As soon as I saw the food, my stomach caved in on itself and growled.

  “Ohmygod, thank you. What with one thing or another, we didn’t eat tonight.”

  She smiled as she set down the tray. “I figured as much.” I picked up the glass, letting the root beer bubbles fizz up around the ice cubes and hit my nose before guzzling it down.

  Diane sat in one of the easy chairs, watching us eat for a minute. When she thought we had enough in our bellies to listen, I guess, she said, “All this stuff going on with you all, there’s the Devil in it somehow.”

  I almost choked on my food. John put down his plate. “What makes you say that, Grandma?”

  “I’m a lot of years old, John Junior. I can tell the difference between the crap people do and the crap the Devil does. This is the Devil all over.”

  John and I stared at each other in surprise. “So you’ve seen stuff like this happen before?” John asked.

  Diane cocked her head slightly, watching us with a faraway glitter in her eyes. “You see it sometimes. Not often, but more than you’d like.”

  I shoved my food aside and sat with my hands in my lap, my knee jittering. “So…do you know how to make it stop?”

  Grandma Diane studied me for a long time, the corners of her mouth turned down. “I might,” she finally said. “I can certainly try. I’ll call up Pastor Fred in the morning. But he’ll need to know the source of it.” Her eyes on me were penetrating, and my cheeks burned. Could I tell this sweet lady that it was my own mama who had called her an animal? She didn’t give me the chance. She stood. “You get some sleep, because I’m gonna have Pastor Fred marry you in the morning too. You can have the party later, if you want, but I think in this case it might get the Devil off your tail.”

  “That’s what John says.” I smiled weakly at him.

  We went to sleep that night on the lumpy guest bed, curled around one another.

  We’ll be married tomorrow, I told myself. This nightmare will be over soon.

  It seemed only a few minutes later that a frantic knock at the bedroom door jerked us out of sleep. The room was still dark, streetlights shining through the thin curtains.

  “Y’all get up!” Diane said, her voice frantic. “John’s mama and daddy have disappeared.”

  Far off, like a fading dream, I heard Mama’s hoarse, bitter laughter.

  You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

  Chapter Seven

  Meeting the Parents

  It was only four-thirty in the morning, but no one was tired.

  NPR’s Morning Edition was the only sound in the car as we drove to John Sr. and Rosine’s house, where Eileen was staying while she was home from college for the summer. She’d been the one who had called to say they were gone.

  I let Grandma Diane ride shotgun, and I was lonely and cold in the back, wishing for John’s arm around me. Dawn was beginning to light the horizon, and I realized I’d have been marrying John today if it weren’t for Mama.

  Why the fuck can’t you leave me alone, Mama? Why can’t the past be the past?

  I clenched my chin to my chest and fought back the need to cry, to scream, to disappear into my hatred and guilt. None of that would do any good.

  When we got to the house, Eileen was pacing the living room floor. Diane sat down stiffly on the sofa, pulling up the hems of her slacks. “You didn’t call the police, right, Eileen?”

  “No, Grandma, you told me not to, so I didn’t.”

  “That’s a good girl.”

  Eileen stopped pacing and scowled. “But I don’t get why you don’t want me to call them.”

  Diane grunted. “When black folk disappear, police start blaming other black folk. And besides, the police won’t be any help in this case.” She swung her eyes over to me, studying me down the length of her sharp nose. A sick chill grappled me all over.

  “What do you mean?” Eileen asked.

  “Well, tell me what happened here,” Diane said, tearing her gaze from mine and looking back at Eileen. “You said on the telephone you didn’t hear any sound of a struggle?”

  “Nope. I woke up ‘cause I heard the door shut, and I was like, what the hell? I heard a car pull away, but Mom’s and Dad’s cars are still in the garage. I got up, and they were gone. There’s no sign of a struggle anywhere…” She hugged her elbows. “I thought…I didn’t know what I thought, but when I saw the note…”

  “Note?” John said.

  “Show us the note,” Diane said.

  Eileen nodded shakily and led us into the master bedroom.

  The sheets were pulled back and rumpled like they’d been slept in, but Eileen was right: there was no sign of a struggle. The pillows were still in their places; nothing was knocked over. She pointed to a scrap of lined notebook paper that sat on one of the bedside tables alongside what I recognized as John Sr.’s glasses.

  My stomach soured as I stepped closer. Written in blood, just like on the invitations, was one sentence:

  Brought them home to meet the family.

  Though the golden morning sun was starting to stream through the slat blinds, the room seemed to go dark around me. I glanced up to see Diane watching me with a small, strange smile.

  “Where are they, Tara Faith?”

  Diane and Eileen didn’t ask any questions on the way, which I was thankful for, though I could have used a break from my thoughts. Eileen drove, and John sat in back with me, but he kept his gaze out the window.

  I was heading back to the home I swore I’d never see again. The place that held me captive to shame and fear during my childhood. Every time I thought I was getting away from that past, it found a way to suck me back.

  I snuck a glance at my fiancé, and my eyes clouded over with tears, my throat choking up so tight I had to gouge my fingernails into my wrists to keep from making a noise. He may have been able to get past what had happened to him in that house the first time, but now his parents were in there. The image of the same thing happening to them as had to John fried my guts and made me writhe and gouge my fingernails even deeper. I couldn’t stand this. How much worse was it for John?

  They’ll be okay, I told myself over and over.

  But what if they weren’t? And even if they were, at what point would John have had enough?

  Goddammit, Mama. I hate you. I fucking hate you!

  It seemed like that half-hour trip would have been one of those interminable things, being trapped in my memories and terrors for an age. But I came out of my dark thoughts as we pulled up the drive.

  The morning sun shone on new royal blue paint and shining white trim, the old hedges neatly clipped, fresh sod trimmed, and bright coreopsis waving in the breeze. It looked like a different house. But it wasn’t. Beneath all that show Mr. Corner had slapped on, it was the same old hellhole.

  Eileen turned off the engine and sat gazing up at the house with her lips quirked. “This is really the place? They’re here?”

  Diane made a low noise in her throat. “Devil lives everywhere.”

  My palms stung. Blood was dripping from where I’d dug my fingernails in, and I wiped them on my sweatpants and threw the car door open.

  “Tara Faith—” John called.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  I stomped up the porch steps, which had also been fixed and painted, and rapped hard at the front door. A car door opened behind me, and footsteps sounded on the gravel drive. I whirled ar
ound. “Go back, John!”

  The house door swung open, and I turned back to find a middle-aged white man gazing down at me. “Good morning.”

  Every bit of the bravado I’d mustered to get to this door drained out of me as I looked into that politely bewildered face. “Hey, uh. Uh, I don’t suppose John and Rosine Speyers are here?”

  The man’s expression grew even more confused. “Beg pardon? Who?”

  John’s footsteps mounted the steps behind me. That boy just couldn’t follow directions. “Tara Faith.”

  I turned to tell him again to get the hell back into the car. But then the world turned sideways.

  It was like falling off a cliff but with six times the gravity. I plunged sideways toward the door of the house. I planted my feet and caught the door handle as I fell past, and John clutched at the porch railing and caught it just in time.

  My feet were slipping, the door slowly swinging inward, dragging me with it.

  “Tara!” John reached out for my arm, and I felt his fingers start to close around it, but I’d be damned if I’d let him get dragged into this shit again.

  “No!” I pried him loose and pushed him back. The motion made me lose my balance, and the door swung forward, pushing me ahead of it.

  It slammed shut, and I fell to the polished wood floor of the entry, gasping.

  The man who had opened the door loomed above me, looking down with that same little confused smile on his face.

  “Welcome home, you goddamned slut,” he said.

  The voice was his, but the bile in it was all too familiar. I scrambled to my feet. “Fuck you, Mama, you horrible bitch!” I about threw a punch but stopped myself, gathering my fists at my sides, every muscle in my body about ready to burst. I couldn’t hurt some damned spirit. I’d only hurt some poor bald dude.

  The man’s little smile twitched, and for a moment, his face went slack, his lips hanging. “Marie?” he called weakly. “Marie? Are you downstairs?” Then slowly, like someone was inflating him into shape again, his expression contracted back into the little smile. The sharp, gray eyes were fixed on me, unblinking.