Remember Why You Fear Me

by Robert Shearman

  It must be asleep. It might be asleep.

  If spiders sleep.

  No, of course they sleep. (But how come they end up in the bath and sink every morning? What have they been doing in the darkness, to get there?)

  You could make a run for it.

  You could make a run for the door, especially if the spider is asleep. The door is on the far corner of the room. You could get out of bed—don’t run for the door, that might startle it, tiptoe to the door. The spider’s body isn’t blocking the door. There’s a leg near it, but still.

  You’re naked. You’ve left your clothes on the floor. Near the sink. Near the TV. Near the mirror. Near the spider.

  You really wish you’d packed your pyjamas.

  It’s not that you fear running into a hotel corridor at three in the morning without any clothes on. Maybe you should, but that’s not the worry, you think a giant spider might be seen as extenuating circumstances. It’s just that—and this might seem an odd thing to realize suddenly, but—you’ve got skin. And any part of the spider could reach out and touch your skin. And you know right away—you don’t want that to happen, not at any cost. You don’t want your skin touched. No touching of the skin, please. If you had your pyjamas on, that’d be your armour. You wouldn’t mind the spider touching your pyjamas. (Well. You would. But.) But not the skin. Not you.

  You could make a run for it. If the spider is asleep. (But is it pre-tending?) You could make a run for the door. But you’re not going to.

  You don’t want the light on. Suddenly, you don’t want the light on. The light might wake the spider up. In the light, the spider can’t fail to see you. And very carefully, very gently, you stretch your hand out from underneath the bed sheets. You realize you’ve tucked yourself deep down so that every last bit of you, right up to your eyes, is hidden. You hadn’t even known you’d done this. Now this single hand breaks cover, bravely it reaches out across the wide expanse between the safety of the bed and the glare of the bedside lamp—it grasps for the switch—it flicks it off.

  Blackness again. And right away, you think maybe you’ve made a big mistake.

  Perhaps the spider will leave. If you go back to sleep, it might be gone by morning.

  And it occurs to you—only now—where did it come from? The window is too small, the door is locked. Not up through the sink this time, certainly—it’d have pulled up all the plumbing in the process.

  And wide eyed you stare up into the darkness, try to make out the black bulge. Is it still there? You can’t be sure. You think you see something move—and then you swivel your head, fast, to your left side, and something in the darkness there shifts as well—and back to the right side, and on the right, the same—you close your eyes tight now, all you can see is the blackness in your head, and here, even here, you can see the faint outlines of shapes, and the shapes are moving, and the shapes are moving towards you.

  You open your eyes. In a moment you’ve grabbed for the light. You think if you brush anything you shouldn’t, anything hairy, you’ll scream. You don’t. Because what you’re tracing with your fingers is the wire to the lamp, smooth and plastic, it’s really nothing like a spider leg, and you’re pulling at it now hard, and the lamp is rocking on its stand, loud and clumsy so the spider can hear, and you’ve found it, you’ve found the switch, and you press it.

  And the spider has gone.

  There’s a thrill of relief to that. Just for a moment.

  Because—of course—this means it wasn’t asleep. (You were right not to make a run for it. You were right not to make a run for it. Well done, you.) It wasn’t asleep, and it’s moved. It’s moved, lightning fast. Where has it moved to?

  It’s not on the ceiling anymore. It’s not on the walls, not to the left or to the right. And that leaves only one place, and you shift in the bed slowly, very slowly, because you know you’re right, and you don’t want to move at all because you don’t want to attract attention, but you have to be sure, and—

  And three of its legs are now tickling the headboard behind you. And that’s not the worst of it, there’s another leg, and it’s longer than those three legs somehow, it’s on the bed itself, it’s nestled lazily against the side pillow. The side pillow that’s just inches away from the other pillow, the pillow on which you’d buried your head and pressed your cheeks and touched with your eyes and ears and mouth, oh God. Oh God, and you gasp. You can’t help it, and a gasp isn’t bad in the circumstances—but you’re so close to the spider, and the noise causes the spider to flinch. Maybe not even the noise, maybe flinching from the very breath from inside you, God, maybe it feels you’ve just spat on it. You back away, rucking up the sheets as you do so, yanking them free from where they’d been tucked in, damaging your fortress, damaging your cover.

  And you’re so naked, all your skin.

  You pant for breath. You try to be silent. The spider is silent. The spider doesn’t make a single sound.

  And you wonder whether it can see you. Of course it can see you.

  It has eight eyes. Bulbous, and dark as oil. And you’re reflected in each of them.

  You stare at its legs. You force your eyes down to the legs. And you remember how you took such care when you scooped spiders up never to break the legs, because they’re so vulnerable, and you wouldn’t want the spider to suffer. You never want anyone to suffer, not really. And the legs are now the thickness of bathroom pipes, but the funny thing is they still look vulnerable, you feel that you could still grab hold and snap one off. And at the thought of that, at the thought of the grip that would entail, of the tightness of that grip as you press against the spider, you dry heave. Your body can’t help it. And still you stare at the legs—and the hairs that cover them, at this size not so much hairs, more a coat of dark fur—and the fur is quivering, each tip of it standing on edge and dancing within the breeze. Except there is no breeze—the air conditioning is off—there’s no air getting in from outside—it feels like there’s no air to breathe (oh, you’re sharing the same little air with the spider, what’s been in its lungs is now inside yours)—so all this quivering, each single hair on the legs flicking back and forth, it’s something the spider is doing itself. Does it even know it’s doing it? Does it even know that as it’s flexing its legs, it’s causing all the hairs upon them to thrill? Does it care?

  You stare at the legs, because you daren’t look up into the eyes again.

  And then suddenly, before you realize you’d even decided to do it, you flee. You rush for the door. And as you do you feel something tugging you back, you feel the spider has grabbed you by the leg, and you’ve no choice, at last you do scream, and you jerk away hard—and your leg’s caught in the sheets, that’s all it is, but it’s tipped you off balance, you try to steady yourself but you can’t, over you go, over you go, you fall off the bed, and it seems you’re falling so slowly, but you hit the floor with a thump. And part of you knows it’s all over, your chance of escape over, you’ve squandered those precious seconds you needed, you should just lie there dazed and give up—but you don’t, you won’t—you kick yourself out of the tangle of bed linen, and you’re stumbling up into a run now, head down—and head down is good, because you can hear the spider now, it’s behind you, it’s chasing, it’s back upon the ceiling and skittering across the polystyrene tiles and they make light popping noises as its legs bore grooves into them—it’s good that your head is down, because if you were at full height it’d be skimming the underside of the spider’s body, and you don’t want that, you can’t have that, if it touches you you’ll die. And the room is bigger than you thought, but it’s really ever so small, and you’re at the door, and your hands are around the knob, and you’re pulling at it, and pushing at it, and it won’t open—and then you remember it’s locked—it’s locked and the key is on the bedside table, the bedside table which is now miles away, miles from you and the other side of an angry spider. And only now do you dare turn back. And you can see
the bedside table. And you can see the key. And you can see the spider coming towards you, and it’s not racing, it doesn’t need to, but it’s still coming to you, and it’s still so huge. And once more you feel the urge to give up. Shall you give up? Just give up. And you can’t move anyway, and you wonder whether you’re caught in a web. And then you scream again, and the spider flinches too—and you’re away, you’re away from the door now, you’re past the spider, straight back to the bed, you fling yourself upon the mattress and pull the mess of sheets over your head like a naughty little boy who should have been fast asleep hours ago.

  The spider stays where it is. Its torso now largely blocking the door altogether. But you don’t care. You don’t want to try the door again. Not for a long time.

  You take hold of the key, but there’s nothing you want to do with it. Except turn it over and over in your hand. Tight and hard, you like the bite of the key’s teeth, don’t you?

  You watch the spider. It watches you. It probably watches you.

  Some time passes. A long time passes. You think, maybe an hour. You think, maybe lots of hours. Maybe it’ll be dawn soon. You don’t know what difference dawn will make. But maybe things will be better in the morning. Everything is better in the morning.

  But the sun resolutely refuses to rise. It stays night. And the spider stays in its corner of the room. And you stay in yours.

  You wonder why this is happening.

  Is it your fault? For all the spiders you’ve killed. Is this some sort of revenge? You tried so hard to be merciful. You were never cruel. You were never, ever cruel. And had it been up to you, you’d have never hurt anyone. It was Sheila’s doing. It was Sheila. You were only following orders.

  “I’m sorry,” you say out loud. And your voice sounds cracked, and you’re not sure whether that’s fear, or that you’ve not spoken for so long, or maybe it’s genuine remorse. Yes. That’d be the one, let’s go with that.

  The spider says nothing to this. Naturally. But it repositions itself on the wall, adjusts its legs. As if better to hear what you might have to say. As if to get comfy for your story.

  But you have no follow up. You try to think of one, but you can’t.

  “That’s it,” you say.

  And that too is the moment when the bulb on the bedside lamp blows.

  For a second when you’re plunged into darkness you think that something much worse has happened—that this is death—that the heart that has been pounding away inside your chest all this while has finally given up the ghost and called it quits—that the spider has taken offence at your ridiculous apology and leaped halfway across the room in an instant and bitten your head off. And then you’re reacting, faster than you could imagine; all the adrenalin that has been coursing through your body hits the motherlode, and you’re throwing yourself across the bed, to the other side, to the other lamp—because you mustn’t let that spider hide itself in the black. And the light snaps on, and you blink, and the spider’s eyes are inches away from yours. And in those few seconds it did leap across the room, it did come for you, and a moment later it’d have been on your face, in your hair, it’d have wrapped itself around your body, who knows?—and the two of you are so close now, and as it quivers you can feel the motion against your own skin. And it stares at you, as if to say, “Well, what now?”, and even this near it is still silent, you think you’d be able to hear something but still there’s nothing, and you think you could bear it if only it made the slightest sound.

  Then—sound; but it doesn’t come from the spider; it comes from behind it. And it’s so hard to tear your gaze away from the spider’s now, but you force yourself, you look through it, and watch as a beetle crawls up the breezeblock wall. It meanders, unhurried, unbothered.

  It’s the size of your chest, and there was a time maybe when finding an enormous insect on your bedroom wall might have alarmed you. But now you want to call out to it—run away! Fast! Get back to where you came from! (Under the bed? Are there more bugs lurking under your bed?—and even though you’re face to face with a ten-foot spider, you find yourself shrinking away from the edge towards it.) The beetle is an idiot. The beetle is a moron. The beetle is cheerfully strolling past a spider, and it’s not even trying to go in a straight line, it positively lingers, doesn’t it know what danger it’s in? And for a moment the spider too can hardly seem to believe the stupidity of its prey, it almost considers letting the thing go—and then it turns from you, it’s skittering up the wall after it, and for the first time you can appreciate how fast the spider is, it can turn its body about in an instinct, it can manipulate its eight legs with grace and skill that is frankly beautiful.

  And the spider appears to squat over the beetle, and even now the beetle doesn’t seem alarmed, if anything it’s somewhat bemused to find something impeding its journey. Its struggles are of confusion, not fear—and then the spider draws out its fangs, and they’re wrong, they look wrong—they’re white, they’re white like enamel, they look like giant human teeth, a brilliant bright white sliding out of its black veined body. And the spider hesitates just for an instant, and you could swear it’s for your benefit, it’s looking at you, there you are reflected once more in all its oily eyes—what is it, a warning? What, showing off? “Look what I can do!”—and then the fangs speed downwards, and the force of them is terrifying, and the teeth pierce right through the carapace shell of the beetle, and there’s a blunt crack, and you can hear the punctured beetle groan—and you can’t help but hug your fleshy naked body, and you realize the pyjamas wouldn’t have worked as armour after all. And the beetle is shuddering now, its stupid eyes bulging out, and it seems to fatten and swell, as if it’s being pumped full of something, soon it isn’t just the eyes that start to bulge. And its hard shell seems to be covered with grease. Is it a spider that injects its victims with venom? Or is that wasps? Or snakes? The beetle is still whimpering, but now the spider caresses it with a single leg. And it could be just to hold its food in place, because moment by moment as you watch the beetle seems to be becoming less a solid and more a liquidy gloop—but there’s also something calming about it, as if the spider is trying to ease its distress. As if to say, I know you’re my dinner, and I know that’s pretty harsh, and I know what’s going on inside your dissolving body is hardly welcome to you. But I don’t want to be cruel about it. I don’t want to be cruel. And part of the shattered carapace comes off altogether, and drifts to the floor like a feather.

  And when the spider starts to feed, at last it makes a sound. And you’ve heard it before. Sometimes you and Sheila would take little Laura out to a cafe. Laura liked to have fizzy drinks with lots of ice in, and suck them up through a straw. But it was always the straw that appealed most to her, not the lemonade or the Fanta or the Coke—she liked slurping noisily at the ice cubes. Other people in the cafe would glare at you all; you would tell Laura off—”Stop that, it’s disgusting!” Because it truly was, the greed of it, the unashamed demonstration she wanted to make that she was enjoying her drink and everyone should know, the way she’d smack her lips each time she swilled up another melting shard of ice. Sheila never even seemed to hear it. Or she’d say, “Leave her alone, she’s having fun,” or, “She’s not doing any harm.” And she’d look at you, and you knew what that look meant, this is my daughter, not yours; until you pay your way, until you find some use in this family, you don’t get any rights. And Laura would grin at you, she’d actually grin, because she could do whatever she bloody liked, because she had more authority than you, and you’d feel such rage towards her then that you could feel your fist itching, and you’d think, not again, and you’d think, why do they keep pushing me to this, and you’d think, not Laura, she’s just a kid, if you’re going to be angry, direct it at the mother. And you’d dig your fingernails into your hands, and that calmed you down a bit, you liked the feel of them biting at your skin, the little hurt—and Sheila would smile so blandly as if she didn’t know what she was pu
tting you through, and Laura would just carry on, and she’d blow down her straw hard so that the dregs of her drink would bubble and froth.

  You watch the spider as it feeds, as it slurps. And your stomach starts to rumble. You can barely believe it. Revolted as you are, seeing the spider eat is making you hungry.

  The spider doesn’t notice at first. But now the rumbling has started, it won’t stop. Your stomach crying out for some little food, whatever it may be.

  The spider pauses. It seems uncertain. Then it slowly crawls down the wall towards you. You flinch—and the spider seems to shake, no, not that now, no more of that. And you see that hanging from its mandibles is a piece of beetle.

  You can’t be sure what that means. Not until it drops the piece of meat beside you, and turns back to its own dinner.

  The chunk of liquefying insect inks a stain on the white sheets. And the spider resumes its sucking—then stops when it sees you haven’t touched your meal.

  It comes up to you. What is it? Angry? Impatient?

  You prod the goo with your finger. It’s sticky, and surprisingly warm.

  The spider seems to wait as you put a little glob of it in your mouth.

  It doesn’t seem to mind when you choke on it, when you bring it straight up again. Sheila would have minded. Sheila would have been very offended. But the spider is fine. It even looks pleased. It flexes its mandibles at you in encouragement. It’s giving you the kissy face.

  That said, the spider won’t leave until you’ve taken another bite. This time it stays down. You try not to think of the food in your mouth as beetle. It’s like thick gravy. You don’t think of that. You think of custard creams. You think of custard creams, and how all the salty goo is just the custardy filling in the middle. And all the hard bits, you give no thought to what they might really be, they’re just little crumbs of biscuit. You swallow down the custard creams, warm custard creams, meaty custard creams, and your stomach growls with approval.