by Ninie Hammon
Laughs in the Wind. Click-click. A mental photograph of my little sister.
Someday, I’ll paint that.
As I dressed, I heard a lawn mower crank beneath my open window. A teenage boy from down the street, Billy … something—I couldn’t remember his last name—had come to mow the front yard and the strip of grass on the side of the house that stretched back to the garage. Like waves breaking on the shore, the ebb and flow of the mower—closer, closer, closer, farther, farther, farther—filled my room with the sweet aroma of new-mown grass.
I reached into my purse for money to pay him. Was $20 too much? Not enough? Well, it was either that, a $50 bill or a handful of change. That was all I had. I zipped my jeans, padded next door to the studio, then hesitated at the door. Surely, Petey was all right.
“Pretty boy, Petey. Hi there,” he called from his perch on the swing in his cage when he saw me.
The intensity of the relief I felt made it clear my attempt to put the Petey alive/Petey dead episode behind me had bombed. The sight of him hanging there had been so real that it called into question the nature of reality itself, or at least my perception of reality.
I’d looked up the word “hallucination” in the Encyclopedia Britannica in the study before I went to bed. The definition was chilling: “the brain’s reception of false sensory input, experiencing an event through one or more of the senses that is not occurring in the real world.”
The only thing more chilling than the definition was the list of causes, from hallucinogenic drugs to schizophrenia. Severe emotional distress was in the list—stuck out like it was in boldface type—cuddled up next to poisonous mushrooms, temporal lobe lesions and brain tumors.
As usual, Bobo had set my breakfast out for me. We’d missed having our cereal together the past couple of days. But my Grape Nuts was still waiting for me, poured in a pottery bowl with sugar on top, set on a Home Sweet Home placemat. A spoon lay neatly on a folded paper towel beside the bowl, next to a jelly glass of orange juice.
Billy was on the back porch, his hand poised to knock on the screen door as I came into the kitchen.
“I’m all done, Miss Anne,” he said politely. He was a tall, lanky kid wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap backward, a University of Texas Longhorns T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. “I didn’t have to put no gas in the mower.” He gestured to the red gasoline can beside the lawn mower, which was parked in front of the garage bay door at the end of the last strip of mowing. “You still got the whole five gallons.”
“Thanks, Billy.” I handed him the $20. He looked down at it, lifted his eyes and gave me a huge smile. Too much. I closed the screen and sat down at the table to have my breakfast.
When I poured the milk over the cereal, it didn’t look blinky.
But it tasted like it was going bad, and I poured the remainder of the carton down the drain after I set my empty cereal bowl in the sink. Bobo was going to get sick eating bad food one of these days. Obviously, her sense of taste was rapidly going the way of her sense of smell, or she couldn’t choke down her sugarless lemon meringue pie.
Julia wasn’t here yet. Today was a half day; she’d be here at noon. Bobo was out in the chicken yard. And I was a woman on a mission.
Ikea storage cabinet, prepare for battle. I will take no prisoners.
The pieces for the storage unit—nuts, bolts, screws—and the tools I’d need to assemble it lay in neat piles on the studio floor. I still wanted a hammer, though. The tack hammer worked on the bookshelves, but I might have to drive some dowel pins into precut holes for the cabinet unit, and for that I’d need a hammer with a bigger head. Maybe Bobo or the Mystery Hammer Thief had returned it to the garage.
Bobo emerged from the chicken house as I went down the back steps. She had a bucket of chicken feed and was crooning, “Here chick-chick-chick, here chick,” as she tossed handfuls of feed on the bare ground inside the chicken yard fence. I waved and hollered hello, but she took no notice of me.
I stepped into the garage through the side door and flipped the light switch. Waiting in the cool dark for the buzzing florescent bulbs overhead to stop blinking, I inhaled the smell of sawdust. Some smells are universally revered. Coffee brewing. Bacon frying. Burning leaves. Baby powder. And sawdust.
Even so, I was overwhelmed by the intensity of the aroma; the fragrance was so thick and powerful it was intoxicating. I breathed in a great lungful of it, savored the nuances, the different aromas of different woods. The sweet smell of pine. The tart smell of hickory. And cedar! No words could describe the sensory delight of cedar, so extraordinary I could actually see the smell as a color in the air. The others became colors, too, spinning around me like the rings around Saturn. The robin’s-egg blue of pine, golden hickory, and cedar glowing like a brilliant amber stone. A warm, exquisitely fragrant breeze ruffled my hair as the colors swirled past, filling …
Scratch! Scratch! Scratch!
The smells and colors were instantly terrified by the noise. In panicked disarray, they bolted into the shadows and hid there, trembling. All the warmth in the room ran away, too, leaving me behind in the cold. The frigid air tingled on my skin, and my breath frosted in puffy clouds in front of my face.
Scratch!
Something behind the chest freezer by the door was scratching to get out. The waist-high, white box began to scoot away from the wall; something was pushing it from behind.
And suddenly, I wanted to hide, too, or get out of the garage. But the freezer was between me and the door.
Scratch! Scratch!
Slowly, a black stick rose up over the back of the freezer. It was about the size of the extension hose on a vacuum cleaner and limber like that, too, only it was fuzzy. Hairy. It bent over the top edge of the freezer almost like an appendage, feeling around. A finger.
I backed toward the far wall of the garage as a second hairy black stick appeared over the top of the freezer.
And a third.
The freezer continued to inch away from the wall, sliding across the dirt floor with a grating sound that set my teeth on edge. Something big behind it was shoving it forward. A fourth hairy leg grabbed hold of the top of the freezer, and the four of them began to heft something up from behind it, to pull something out of the tight space where it had hidden, biding its time, waiting for me.
When the head of the giant spider peeked over the top of the freezer, I began to scream. To shriek. But I could hear no sound but my heart hammering in my chest, explosively thud, thud, thudding in my ears. I stared in fascinated revulsion as the bulbous body climbed all the way up to the top of the freezer, and the creature sat glaring at me. A tarantula spider the size of a washing machine.
Its voice was a grating rumble, something metal dragged through gravel.
“We’ve come for you, Annie.” Pure evil in a sound. The stench of rotting corpses on its breath filled the cold air, thick and overpowering. I gagged reflexively, again and again, and tasted vomit in my mouth.
Other spiders, all different sizes, appeared on the aluminum ladder by the freezer, crawled out of the spare tire leaned against the wall, climbed over the tops of the two brown plastic garbage cans and dropped down off the rafters in the ceiling above my head. The dirt floor was suddenly alive with smaller ones the size of tennis balls. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them, an invading army of black, hairy tarantula spiders marching in unison toward me.
I backed away, my legs barely able to hold my weight, until I hit the metal shelves on the opposite wall of the garage. There was nowhere else to run. I screamed, shrieked until my throat was raw, but the thundering pounding of my heart drowned out the sound. I could smell myself, the acrid fear-stench of the sticky sweat that suddenly slathered my body like a coating of oil.
The smaller ones began to crawl up on my shoes. I kicked them off, jumped away, lurched toward the back of the garage.
And I stepped on one. It made a squishing sound beneath my shoe.
Like the sound of the tarant
ula I grabbed off Windy and stomped into the dirt.
A communal cry of pain and rage rose up from all of them, a moaning, wheezing wail from their pitted throats, their mouths open, dripping.
“You’ll pay!” They screamed, glaring their hatred at me with glowing red eyes, all the voices different. Rumbling, raspy, growling terrors.
Something touched my cheek, and I jerked away. A hairy, black leg dangled down from a spider the size of a watermelon perched on the rafter above me. It dropped onto my head, and I grabbed at it, caught one leg and jerked to pull the monster off me. But the leg came off in my hand and green goo ran down the side of my face. The creature shrieked, and I shook my head violently, knocking it onto the floor.
The small ones had reached me again, climbed up my legs, and I couldn’t kick them off fast enough. They clung to my clothes, skittered up my body, and I batted at them, writhed away. The big one crawled down off the freezer as I fought the others. The ranks of smaller spiders parted to let him pass until he was standing in front of me.
Then he lunged, slammed into my chest with the force of an attack dog, knocked me flat on my back in the dirt in front of the shelves. His legs pinned me down. I squirmed and twisted, trying to knock him off me, beating him with my fists, only dimly aware of the pain, all over my body, from dozens of tarantula bites.
I smelled the rotted stench of his breath, saw the dripping, open maw of his mouth coming toward my face. I shoved at him with the strength of desperation and knocked him aside. I sat up, tried to stagger to my feet, but he jumped at me, hissing like a cobra, and slammed me backward into the wall. I heard something scrape above me.
Blackness.
The pain on the top of my head throbbed with every heartbeat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. I opened my eyes and had trouble focusing for a few seconds. Lines. Were they … boards? Then the lines resolved themselves into wooden rafters high above my head. Something cold—gray metal—rested against my cheek; something lay across my chest. I touched it. A wooden handle. I moved it aside. A rake? An iron rake.
What was a rake doing on my chest?
Where was I? Lying in the dirt, the smell of sawdust …
Sawdust. The garage.
Spiders!
I sat bolt upright, instantly hysterical, screamed and feverishly slapped at my arms and legs—all in one movement.
Crawling on me. Biting me! The big one …
I jerked my head from side to side, looking frantically around the room, trying to see everything at once. Searching for … they were gone. The spiders weren’t there.
But they’d be back! I had to get out of that garage while I still could.
I lurched to my feet, wobbly, and staggered toward the door, my eyes darting. The spare tire. The ladder. The rafters. The garbage cans. I expected to see black, hairy monsters crawl out of hiding at any second. The freezer was no longer scooted away from the wall where the big one had climbed out …
I couldn’t breathe if I thought about that! I was making little hitching, sobbing sounds as I banged into the side of the work bench, tried to get my balance and dived for the door.
His breath smelled like rotted flesh. If I think about him, I’ll go crazy!
I yanked the door open, leapt outside and stumbled, fell face first into the dirt, rolled over and scooted backward on my butt away from the garage as fast as I could. Panting, gasping for air. Not taking my eyes off the door.
They were in there, hiding. The garage was full of them, a nest of tarantulas, and they’d come out again. They’d crawl out from behind the freezer and the tire, drop down from the rafters and swarm out the door. Any second now, they’d come looking for me!
Close the door! Quick, close the door!
I staggered up, tottered unsteadily two or three steps, grabbed the door and slammed it shut, hammering the latch on it down so hard it hurt my hand. Then I jumped back. A wave of revulsion raised goose bumps on my arms, and I didn’t want to touch any part of that building.
That’s when I spotted it. There was a crack under the door. Not a very big one, but big enough. They’d get out that way, crawl out through the crack! Spiders the size of toasters would squeeze through. Even the big one. They’d slide under the door and …
The bay door! I suddenly noticed a three-inch space between it and the ground. The spiders weren’t shut up in the building at all! They could escape under both the doors, maybe out other cracks I couldn’t see.
And they would escape, all right. They’d crawl out and come after me, all of them. They’d find me. Climb up my body onto my face. The spiders would never stop, never give up until they killed me.
Unless I killed them first.
Someone shouted in my head, hollered so loud the tinnitus in my ears protested with a roaring buzz.
Burn it! the voice yelled. Go on. Do it, Annie. Set it on fire.
It wasn’t my voice, but I knew it. I’d heard it before.
I looked around, fighting hysteria, still breathing in hitching gulps. My eye fell on the gasoline can Billy had left by the lawn mower in front of the garage door.
“You still got the whole five gallons,” he’d said.
I dropped to my knees beside the can and tried to open it. But my hands were trembling so badly I couldn’t unscrew the lid.
“Aggghhhhh!” I let out a cry of frustration so ragged it hurt my throat, and slapped the side of the can as hard as I could.
Calm down. You can do this. You have to do this!
The pain in my hand steadied me, at least enough so I could wrestle the lid off the can. Then I picked it up, stepped to the garage and began to splash gasoline from it onto the building. The liquid hit the walls and soaked instantly into the ancient, parched wood. Down the side of the building across from the chicken yard fence. Around the back. I had to climb over a pile of concrete blocks someone had stacked between the back wall of the garage and the cedar tree hedge that separated the property from the open prairie beyond. Up the other side, where the hedge blocked the view of the weed-covered vacant lot between our house and the nearest neighbor.
Sucking in gasoline fumes with every breath, I was dizzy and light-headed by the time I’d circled the building. I used the last of the liquid in the can on the big bay door on the front that hadn’t opened for a car in a quarter of a century. I drenched it in gasoline.
Every second counted now. When the spiders smelled the gasoline, they’d know I was trying to kill them, and they’d come pouring out of the garage. They’d come for me, angry, that wheezing wail in their ragged, death voices.
Matches. Had to have matches!
There was a barbecue grill on the back porch. Wasn’t there a sack of charcoal lying in it, maybe a can of starter fluid? I dropped the empty gas can and ran to the grill, looking over my shoulder every few seconds at the cracks under the garage doors, expecting to see hairy legs poking out from under them, feeling around like fingers.
Charcoal. Lighter fluid. And a butane lighter, the long-nosed kind!
I grabbed a dish towel hanging over the porch railing and squirted the lighter fluid all over it, soaked it as I crossed the yard to the garage. Then I flicked the little black switch on the barrel of the lighter. Nothing. I flicked it again and again, over and over. Just sparks. Maybe it was empty. Maybe it had just been sitting unused outside for too long. I was one flick away from giving up when it suddenly caught and a blue flame danced on the metal tip. I held the flame to the bottom of the cloth drenched in lighter fluid. There was a whump sound; fire bit into the fabric and gobbled it whole. I tossed the burning cloth against the bay door of the garage seconds before the blue flames burned me.
I threw the lighter toward the blazing towel, picked up the lighter fluid can where I’d dropped it on the ground and chucked it at the same spot. Then I just stood, panting, staring into the flames.
Run, you idiot. Run!
I did my best. My legs rubbery, I started down the newly mown strip of grass in front of th
e garage door that stretched between the cedar hedge and the house all the way to the street.
But I only made it a few steps past the porch before I stopped and turned around. I had to see. I had to stay and be sure. I sank to the ground, shaking violently, staring transfixed at the gap under the garage door.
Please. Please, no …
The cloth burned bright; flames leapt up from it to the gasoline-soaked door and smoke started to pour out of the ancient wood. Then the flames began to lick along the line of splashed gasoline, crackling, going both ways at once, across the bay door and around the side of the building.
Any second now, they’ll start crawling out. As soon as it gets hot, they’ll run, like the ground squirrels ran from the rising water.
I knew I should find a place to hide but I couldn’t. I was transfixed with horror. There was smoke now, lots of smoke boiling off the old wood, obscuring the flames in a black cloud.
Then I heard them—hundreds of gravelly death voices, shrieking, crying out inside my skull. The garage was an inferno and the spiders were burning. With flames all around them, they were scratching and clawing, trying to get out.
Just like Windy.
The thought dropped into my mind like a stone tossed from a great height into a still pool, and the ripples undulated in ever-widening circles, an echo reverberating: like Windy, like Windy, like Windy.
Suddenly, the back door burst open, and Bobo was on the porch.
“Oh … oh, my! The garage is a’burnin’!” she gasped. She couldn’t see me, on my knees in the new-mown grass on the side of the house. She stood for a heartbeat on the porch, then turned and ran back into the house.
The whole building was engulfed in flames now, belching black smoke into the sky. I could hear the spiders screaming.
They’ll crawl out on fire. They’ll inch along, smoldering, dragging their fried bodies with burned-stick legs. They’ll come for me—even dead!
The panic inside me finally detonated with a thunderous explosion.
I jumped up and bolted toward the kitchen.
